THE INDIVIDUAL IN MANAGEMENT

Robert S. Hartman

Levels of Value

I am a professional philosopher. I think I owe you an explanation how a sane person can go into

this

profession. I was raised in Germany. I was born on January 27, 1910 in Berlin - on the

Emperor‟s

birthday. Not only was I born on that imperial holiday in the capital of the German Empire, I was

born in the very street which housed the War Ministry, Bendlerstrasse. As a matter of fact, my

birth

house was right opposite the entrance to the War Ministry. I always say, a metaphysical

umbilical

cord connects me with the latest German history.

I grew up in Germany, went to primary school and high school and very early saw the National

Socialist movement beginning. There was a national socialist club at our school. When I was

invited

to this club from time to time, I saw what was going on there; between you and me - we are all

men

here - it was a homosexual outfit, and didn‟t appeal to me. To my great astonishment, in the

course

of my youth, this movement grew into a large political movement, and the leader of this

movement

was slated to become the Chancellor of the German Reich. So I wrote articles and papers already

in

high school against this. One article I remember was entitled "Die Frau Hitler" - "The Woman

Hitler." I showed that the Nazi movement was a movement of perverts and homosexuals. I lit

into

it. I said it was not so much a political as a psychiatric phenomenon. I still have this article. The

Nazis didn‟t like it. I left Germany right after high school, in 1927, studying in France, Spain and

England, returning only in 1932 to finish up my studies in Berlin - and in 1933 Hitler did become

the Chancellor of the German Reich.

What Is Value?

Observing this whole development as a young fellow - starting out when I was about thirteen,

witnessing the Munich trial of Hitler which was a great event to us kids in Munich - and having

to

make up my mind what I would do in life, I thought, here is the very core of evil being organized

into

a political movement, and into a movement that is capturing the whole of Germany - their big

song

was, as you know, "Today we own Germany, tomorrow the whole world" - "Heute gehoert uns

Deutschland, morgen die ganze Welt. "

I had no doubts that if this man with his tremendous power for hate could organize the million

Germans into a military organization, as he promised, then there would be another war, and the

Nazis might win it. They might really become the masters of the world. And I thought to myself,

what guarantee is there that this evil will not win? I saw it winning in Germany, and I thought to

myself, if evil can be organized so efficiently, why cannot good? I decided I would organize

good.

But then I had to find out what was good - and what was evil? I had to find out what was value.

So

I studied law. I thought, in the law, the judges always say what is right and what is wrong; they

must

know what is good and what is evil. I got my law degree - and didn‟t learn a single thing about

good

and bad. For the law does not tell what is good and what is bad. The law tells what is legal and

what

is illegal. I learned the one great lesson from my law experience - that the law is nothing but an

instrument that can be used for good or for evil in the hands of either good or evil people. That

was

an important thing to learn. The law is just like any other instrument. A hammer can be used to

drive

in a nail and to bash in a head. Law is like science. Science is neither good nor evil - but it can be

used for good or evil in the hands of good or evil people. With the atomic power we can make

the

Sahara bloom and we can make the world into a desert. Science is morally neutral, it is, as we

say,

amoral. It is neither moral nor immoral - it is amoral, morally neutral. And so is the law. This

was

an important lesson to learn.

As an example of this moral neutrality of the law there was a few years ago a famous law case in

Germany, the so-called Remer case. It made crystal clear the purely instrumental nature of the

law

for good or for evil There was in Germany a neo-Nazi party led by a man by the name of Remer.

Remer was the fellow who, by an accident, turned the day of the conspiracy against Hitler, the

20th

of July 1944, into a disaster for the conspirators. Maybe some of you saw the movie made about

that

day - a fabulous movie. When the attempt was made, by Colonel Schenk von Stauffenberg at

Hitler‟s

headquarters in Rastenburg in East Prussia, the bomb was put by accident on the other side of the

table, blew up the table and some of the men opposite of Hitler, but to Hitler himself nothing

happened. Stauffenberg, who had seen the building blow up, went back to Berlin and told his

fellow

conspirators Hitler was dead. Unfortunately, the conspiracy was badly organized. It seems the

good

people have never had, so far in history, the efficiency of the bad people. Our task is really to

make

the good people as efficient in the world as the bad people. The good people at that time, both

the

military like Stauffenberg and the civilians, like Goerdeler, were extremely inefficient. Among

other

things, they didn‟t even have the foresight to cut off the telephone switchboard in Berlin or

efficiently to cut off Hitler‟s headquarters from the rest of the country.

Thus, when Stauffenberg came back to Berlin and said Hitler was dead the conspirators started to

take power and to give the corresponding orders all over Germany. Remer was in charge of the

guard

battalion of Berlin and got the order to arrest the Minister of Propaganda, Goebbels. But on the

way

to Goebbels a fellow told him that Hitler was not dead. Remer got confused; as a soldier he had

to

follow order; but whose orders? He marched his men into Goebbel‟s office; Goebbels was sitting

at his desk, and Remer said, “I am here to arrest you.” Goebbels says, “Man you‟re mad. Hitler‟s

alive.” Remer says, “I have the order.” Goebbels says, “The Fuhrer lives.” Remer says, “Show

me.

So, by golly, Goebbels takes the telephone, gets the connection with Hitler, puts Remer on the

telephone, and Remer listens, “Mein Fuhrer!” He recognized the voice immediately. “Yes, sir!”

And

instead of arresting Goebbels he goes back to arrest the people who gave him the order to arrest

Goebbels.

That was Remer. He was very young at that time. After the war he built the neo-Nazi party in

this

Germany of today, which is our so-called ally. And in the course of an election speech he called

to

one of the people present, who was the son of one of the conspirators against Hitler‟s life, “You

son

of a traitor, shut up!” That young man brought a law suit against Remer, saying Remer had

slandered

him, calling him the son of a traitor. The German law court then had to decide whether Remer

had

slandered that young man, or whether he had said the truth; whether the young man was the son

of

a traitor or whether he was, the son of a patriot. And that meant to decide whether the men who

made

the attempt against Hitler‟s life were traitors against Germany or were patriots; and this in turn

meant

to decide whether the government of Hitler was an honest-to- goodness government or a murder

gang. If it was an hones t-to-goodness s government then the rebels were traitors and the plaintiff

was the son of a traitor, and Remer had not slandered him but said the truth. But if Hitler‟s

government was a gang and a non-government, so to speak, then Remer would have slandered

him

because then it was the patriotic duty of a German to get rid of Hitler, and the father of the young

man was a German patriot.

That case went all the way up to the Supreme Court in Karlsruhe. The German judges, very

thorough

as they are, got opinions from priests and pastors and rabbis, from professors of philosophy, and

professors of political science, and theologians, and all the opinions were gathered in a book

entitled

“The Remer Case” which is absolutelyfascinating. The judgment was as follows: Remer had

slandered the young man.The government of Hitler was no government. It was a gang which had

ursurpedpower like a gang of criminals. To get rid of Hitler was the duty of every German; the

father

of that young man had done that duty, and therefore Remerhad to go to prison for three months.

Now, you understand very well that if Hitler had been in power again, which is impossible of

course,

on the date of that Supreme Court decision, then those very same judges, with the very same

legality

would have said exactly the opposite. That is the law. The law is morally neutral. It does not tell

us

a thing about good and evil - and this I learned at the end of my law studies. But I didn‟t learn

what

I had set out to learn: what is good and what is bad. I wouldn‟t say I had wasted four years

because

I went into business later, and it helped me a great deal in making contracts and the like. It also

helped me to think with precision in philosophy, which I studied next. In philosophy, I was sure,

I

would find what I was looking for. So I became a philosopher. By that time I was in America,

went

to Northwestern, and got my doctorate.

In philosophy, the situation was even more interesting than in the law, and in a way even more

frustrating. However, I did find eventually what I was look ing for. Now we have to go a little

into

philosophy.

Our problem is, what is good and what is bad. For how can we organize goodness if we don‟t

know

what it is?

Now what is goodness? Plato started out with the question and said the following. The

interesting

thing about goodness, he said, is that it is very difficult to find a common denominator for all the

things that are called good. If I have a concept, let us say, of fruit, I have no difficulty in defining

what makes the different things that are fruit to be fruit. Oranges are fruit, apples are fruit, pears

are.fruit, plums are fruit and they all have something in common which makes them to be fruit.

But

how about good things? Now I give you my own examples, not Plato‟s. Here is a good

microphone,

this is a good desk, this is a good lamp. I am a good person. You are a good person. God is good.

TWA is a good airline. Swiss cheese is good Swiss cheese - now what have all these good things

in

common? It must be goodness, but what is that? The goodness of this microphone, the goodness

of

this desk, the goodness of myself as a person, of yourself as a person, the goodness of God, the

goodness of TWA.- what have all these goodnesses in common? These good things must have

something in common in their goodness if they are all called good. At Plato‟s time, the Sophists

and

others bothered about good things like usefulness, pleasure, satisfaction, purpose; but these, said

Plato, were kinds of goodness; they were not Goodness itself; just as oranges and apples and

pears

are kinds of fruit, but they are not fruit itself. You cannot say that oranges, plums, pears, and

apples

are strawberries. You cannot say that the kinds of fruit have in common another kind of fruit.

They

must have in common the genus fruit, the nature of fruitness. Thus, the good things cannot have

a

particular kind of goodness in common like usefulness or pleasure. I cannot say that pleasure,

satisfaction, purpose are all usefulness. I must say they are all good; they are all valuable; but

what

then is this goodness they have in common? Here we have different kinds of fruit

0 0 0 0 000000

oranges apples pears strawberries etc.

thousands of them. We now put them all together and call them “fruit”.

FRUIT

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Kinds of fruit

“Fruit” is the concept that “grasps together” - “con” means “together” and “cept” means “to

grasp” -

all the kinds of fruit in the genus fruit. So, says Plato, we mus t grasp together the kinds of good

things in one concept, goodness. Thus, here we have the different kinds of good things

0 0 0 0 0 0

good microphones good cheese good persons useful things pleasurable things etc.

--all the good things we can think of. We now grasp them together in the concept “goodness”:

Goodness

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Kinds of good things

(or of goods)

Now, what is this goodness, this concept that all good things have in common? Or, for that

matter,

what is badness, the concept all bad things have in common?

Badness

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Kinds of bad things

And, how are the concepts of goodness and of badness related?

Well, there is a famous passage in Plato‟s dialogue, The Republic. Glaucon says to Socrates:

“Now,

old man, you have talked about the problem aplenty - now tell us the solution.” And Socrates

says,

“My dear Glaucon, the solution does not belong into this dialogue. For this we have to have

another

dialogue. I can‟t tell you what goodness is, I can only tell you what it is like. It is like the sun that

radiates every thing, that warms every thing, that makes every thing fertile and brings forth every

thing.” And Glaucon says, “That‟s a poor answer.” And so did we poor students of philosophy.

So

we looked for that other dialogue where Plato gives the answer, but it was never written. It

doesn‟t

exist. Well then the poor student goes to Aristotle. And Aristotle, in the sixth chapter of the first

book on the Ethics, says, there are many good things and they may or may not have something in

common which is goodness; in any case, this is a problem that does not belong into this

particular

treatise, but into another one. In this treatise, he says, I only speak of human goodness; and then

he

goes into ethics - what is a good man? So you‟re stuck again. You look for that other treatise,

and

again, it was never written. Believe it or not, you go through the whole of philosophy, and

nowhere

do you find the answer to the problem, what is goodness in general?

The Axiom of Value

In the year 1903, an Englishman by the name of George E. Moore wrote a book entitled

Principia

Ethica. He followed, in his title, that of Newton‟s book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathe-

matica, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1687. You know that this book is

the

basis of our whole technological civilization, including the atomic bomb. It was Newton who

made

out of natural philosophy, natural science. Before Newton there was no natural science, there

was

natural philosophy. What is the difference between natural philosophy and natural science? It is

the

difference, for example, between alchemy and chemistry. Or between astrology and astronomy.

Alchemy and astrology were natural philosophies. In Newton‟s time you had more astrology

than

astronomy. Newton‟s great predecessor, Kepler, wrote a book on astrology, but in that book you

find

the three laws of the revolution of the planets, on which Kepler, so to speak, stumbled in the

middle

of all kinds of abstruse reasonings. Kepler tried with life-long persistency to apply mathematical

reasoning to the motions of the stars. He finally found the famous three laws. But it was Newton

who

generalized Kepler‟s laws and made astronomy out of astrology by making mathematics

available

to the observation of the stars. He found a general law, that of gravitation, that was applicable to

all

natural phenomena. You remember the famous apple falling on his head. What pulls that apple

on

my head, he said, is the earth; the earth pulls the apple and the apple pulls the earth; as the earth

pulls

the apple so it pulls the moon, and so the sun pulls the earth and all the planets. Well, it wasn‟t as

easy as that, although he did it when he was 24 years old.

Now then, G. E. Moore wrote Principia Ethica as the prolegomena, the introduction and basis, to

a

science of ethics. He never said it but he may have thought - as I did later - that the world is in a

mess

because we don‟t know what goodness is. If we knew goodness as scientifically as we know

nature

then we could be as efficient in goodness as we are in natural science. In any case, he did write

the

basis of the future science of ethics. First, negatively, by showing that in the whole history of

philosophy, the philosophers had made a grave mistake: they had taken kinds of goodness for

goodness itself. They had mixed up two different logical levels, genus and species. These two

levels,

said George E. Moore, must not be mixed up. There are the good things, and there is goodness

itself.

He called the confusion of these two levels a fallacy. To show this fallacy was his great negative

achievement. It cleared away the philosophical garbage of ages. Positively, he had a more

difficult

time. What is goodness itself? Well, he said, goodness itself is undefinable. I don‟t know what it

is,

nobody knows. I can only say that it is but not what it is. So his book is very short. Yet it is

fundamental, because he at least shows that fallacy of mixing up kinds of goodness or values

with

the notion of value itself.

That was in 1903. Of course, George E. Moore was never happy with that book, and all his life

he

tried to figure out what in the world goodness could be. About twenty years later, in 1922, he

wrote

a little essay - he wrote very little but libraries have been written about him - entitled “The

Conception of Intrinsic Value” - where he said: While good is still undefinable, I can now give

an

exact determination of it. Good - now listen carefully to this - Good is not a sensory property - it

has

nothing to do with the senses. It is not a descriptive property, such as tall, green - any-property

that

you can see, hear, smell or touch. Good is none of those things that you see, hear, smell or touch.

And yet, he said, though this is so, Good depends entirely on the sensory properties of the thing

that

is said to be good.

Now let us see what this means.

Here is a thing that is good. Let‟s say cheese - Swiss cheese. Swiss cheese has a certain smell, it

has

holes, it has a certain kind of density, it has a certain taste, etc. These are the descriptive

properties

of Swiss cheese - the way you recognize Swiss cheese as Swiss cheese. Of course, other things

have

entirely different descriptive properties. TWA, for example, has an entirely different set of such

properties. It has pilots, mechanics, planes, terminals, etc. So everything has its own set of

descriptive properties - its definition. These sets of properties or descriptions can be found in the

Webster by looking up the thing in question. For example, this table - if we are too lazy to figure

out

its definition we look it up in the dictionary. There, under “table” we find: “a piece of furniture

consisting of a flat top set horizontally on legs”. The Webster is full of sets of properties or

descriptions of things. Now, says George E. Moore, goodness is not any one of these properties -

you

can‟t see it, you can‟t smell it, you can‟t sit on it or stand on it, you can‟t handle it in any way,

you

can‟t describe it, nor can it describe anything. Yet, he says, it depends entirely on that set of

properties. In other words, take our Swiss cheese. The goodness of Swiss cheese, he says,

depends

entirely on the descriptive properties of Swiss cheese. So, here we have the set of descriptive

properties and the property good.

Set of Descriptive Properties Property Good

X

X

.

X

X

Now, says G. E. Moore in 1922, the property good depends on the descriptive properties. But,

says

he, I don‟t know how it depends. Thus, in 1903 he says there is goodness. In 1922 he says

goodness

is a non-descriptive property, but it depends on the descriptive properties of the thing. Another

twenty years later, in 1942, he said “If I knew in which way goodness depends on the descriptive

properties then I would know the nature of goodness. And I would have solved the old Platonic

problem..” Then he died. So there we were, poor fellows in philosophy, especially me who

wanted

to find out what goodness is, left up in the air.

Now, first I.want to explain to you as clearly as I can what Moore means. You all have your cars

outside. Now suppose you have forgotten something inside. You hand me your key and you say:

“Bob, here‟s the key to my car. In there is a book. You just open the door and get it out.” I say:

“Well, which is your, car?” “Oh,” you say, “it‟s a good car.” Will I ever find your car? I will

never

find it because you didn‟t describe it to me. Goodness is a non-descriptive property. Now then,

say

some philosophers, the positivists, since “good” doesn‟t describe, it doesn‟t mean a thing. It

doesn‟t

say anything. But that is false. For you did say a great deal to me by saying that your car was

good.

You have said it has a motor, it has brakes, when you push the brakes it brakes, when you push

the

gas pedal it accelerates. You told me that it isn‟t the other way around - when you push the gas

pedal

it brakes, when you push the brake it accelerates. That would not be a good car. I have learned a

lot

about your car, even though you haven‟t described it to me. So what have you done? Well, we

figured out how this goodness was connected with the properties of the thing that was good.

Finally,

we did a very simple thing. We did this.

Descriptive Properties Connection Goodness

X

X

X

X

This means that a thing is good if it has all the properties it is supposed to have. And with this we

founded a new science called value theory or, in Greek, axiology, from axios, meaning value. A

thing is good if it has all the properties it is supposed to have.

Now let us go back to the various things we mentioned. This is a microphone -what‟s a good

microphone? A thing that is called “microphone” and has all the properties that microphones are

supposed to have - obvious. What is a good table? A thing that is called “table” and has all the

properties that tables are supposed to have. What is a good airline? A thing called “airline” that

has

all the properties airlines are supposed to have. So far so good. But now here I am. What is a

good

I? I am good if I have the properties I am supposed to have. Now we are getting into trouble. We

know how to define a microphone. We look it up in the Webster. We know what a table is or an

airline - we look them up in the Webster. So let‟s stop for a minute and take stock.

We now have the general principle of goodness. A thing is good if it fulfills its definition. We

also

have the relation of goodness to badness. A thing is not good, that is, bad, if it does not fulfill its

definition, if it does not have all its descriptive properties. A fourlegged table with only three

legs

is still a fourlegged table, but a bad one. With.this general principle we had axiom of a new

science,

the science G. E. Moore foresaw and prepared but did notbring about.

We now have the following set of sciences today. We have the natural sciences - for example,

physics with its atomic bomb. We have chemistry - astronomy, etc. All these are sciences

because

they are mathematically ordered. Today we know that mathematics is a kind of logic. This was

proved in.1903 - the same year that Moore published Principia Ethica - by Bertrand Russell, the

old

man of 90 today [in 1962] who is against nuclear armament. Thus, science has three levels:

logic,

mathematics, and the specific sciences in question.

What is true of natural science must be true of the social and moral sciences, politics, ethics,

management science, sociology, psychology, religion, and so on. These disciplines until recently

had

no framework according to which they could be ordered. They were philosophies, not sciences.

Therefore, we had on the one hand Einsteinian physics, and on the other hand, Aristotelian

ethics.

What is still taught in high schools and universities today as ethics is Aristotle‟s kind of ethics.

Aristotle wrote a book about physics, but anybody who would teach Aristotelian physics in a

physics

course today would be crazy, for Aristotle‟s physics is all wrong. Today we learn Newton‟s and

Einstein‟s physics, and even they are already passé. But what do we learn in ethics? Aristotelian

ethics. And the Aristotelian ethics is just as wrong as the Aristotelian physics. So we are

extremely

advanced in natural science and completely behind in moral science. We know very well how to

make nuclear bombs, but we don‟t know how to make ourselves good men. And to find out what

good men are we read Aristotle, and what is written there is commonplace trifles. So my students

come to me - I don‟t teach it anymore, just for that reason - they came to me after the classes in

ethics - and said,“Well, do I know now how to be a good man?” “Well, “ I said, “you‟re

supposed

to.” “But,” they said, “we don‟t.” “Of course you don‟t,” I used to say, “I wasn‟t supposed to

teach

you how to be a good man; I was supposed to teach you Ethics. That is, what philosophers of

ethics

have said. And they haven‟t said much.” College students are very intelligent; they want to

know.

You give them that old stuff and they become depressed. So, of course, they try to get ethics by :

Mathematics Axiology

Logic

Natural Value

Sciences 000000 000000 Sciences

Natural Value

Situations 000000 000000 Situations

reading Lord of the Flies and the like, which are truly moral treatises. Aristotelian ethics doesn‟t

fit

the world of Einstein‟s formula, E = mc2, the energy of something is equal to the product of its

mass

times the square of the velocity of light. Since the velocity of light is 186,000 miles a second -

you

square that times 186,000, and you multiply it with this piece of chalk and you can drive a battle

ship

for ten years. With this powerful physics, we put the silly ethics of all these silly philosophers.

The remedy, and the only remedy, is to lift the social and moral disciplines, the so-called

humanities

- to the level of science. The so-called social sciences today are no science at all; they are non-

sciences - philosophies and ideologies. How can they become exact sciences? By being ordered

logically. So we need another kind of logic which orders these disciplines and makes them exact.

As a result, we would know with exactness what a good man is and how a good man can be

good,

and how goodness can be organized. This ordering logic is the science of axiology, or value

theory.

It orders the social disciplines as mathematics orders the natural discipline . The total schema of

the

sciences of the future then looks as in the preceding diagram.

What is a Good Man?

Once I had the axiom of value I tried to apply it. A thing is good if it has all the properties it is

supposed to have. This was very simple for apples, oranges and pears, and chairs and tables and

airlines. All I had to do was to look up their definitions in the dictionary. When a thing had all

the

properties that the dictionary said it should have, it was a good such thing. But then I asked

myself,

“What in the world is a good man?” What is it that makes me good? I am good, according to the

definition, if I have all the properties I‟m supposed to have. Well, then I had to ask myself, what

are

the properties that I‟m supposed to have?

Now the trouble started. To begin with, how do I get a definition of myself? Who gives me my

definition of myself? Of course, nobody can give me the definition of myself but myself. So, I

defined man as the being that has its own definition of itself within itself. This is the difference

between man and anything else. Man is the being that has its own definition of itself within

itself.

The poor chair here doesn‟t know that it is a chair. It is I who gives it the definition. That table

doesn‟t know that it‟s a table. I make it a table. But I am I only when I know I am I. lam a man

by

being a self-conscious being, a being conscious of myself; and any being conscious of itself is a

man.

It makes no difference how it looks. Suppose there are beings on Mars that look like chairs. If

they

can say “I” and they can define themselves - then they are human beings. There was once a

cartoon

in the New Yorker - very funny I thought. It was a restaurant, a space station. At one table were

sitting people like you and me. At another table there were sitting people with antennas, looking

like

ants. But the funniest thing were two doors. One door said “Martians” and the other said

“Terrestrials” - which showed that the biological set-put was different. But it made no difference

-

both were humans in the sense of being able to say “I am I.” To have consciousness of one‟s self

or

conscience - to have one‟s own definition of oneself within himself - that is the definition of the

human.

Now we have advanced already a large step. What I am telling you is called existential

philosophy,

but forget the name right away for it may remind you of beatniks and the like and that is not what

I am talking about. Let‟s call it value theory.

Now, then, I know I am human if I have my own definition of myself within myself. What then

is

the property I have to fulfill to be a good myself? Precisely this: to be conscious of myself, to

define

myself - for to define myself to be conscious of myself - that is the definition of myself. The

more,

therefore, I am conscious of myself, the more, and the more clearly, I define myself - the more I

am

a good person.

Now this was a hard thing for me to learn. I was raised in Germany, and that meant a very

peculiar

education. When I was in grade school, in German called Volksschule, they still beat us,

frequently,

regularly, and systematically, in the German way, prophylactically and kind of scientifically. We

called this discipline. I was raised by disciplinarians as a disciplinarian. My father, bless his soul,

was

a good Prussian. I don‟t think he would mind me saying this - he was and he knew it. He had the

same system - disciplinarian. I was raised as a disciplinarian, a perfectionist - but you see, I never

knew it. I thought that‟s the way things are and things have to be. You do your duty, you do what

you

have to do, come hell or high water. There is no higher value but this. My poor wife - she never

thought that way. But I never knew what she suffered until I tried to define myself. What is the

definition of myself ? I asked myself, “What am I?” Well, I am a professor philosophy; I was at

that

time and still am. But, is that me? That is a member of the class of professors of philosophy. That

is not myself. It‟s only a part of myself. There are thousands of professors of philosophy. What

then

is I - that which is uniquely Robert S. Hartman? Ah, I said to myself, as the Prussian

disciplinarian,

the perfectionist - I do it all as best I can, it just can‟t be done better. But then I thought to

myself,

first, that‟s not true. Secondly, if it were true, so what. Then I would be the best philosopher in

the

world. But that‟s not myself. That‟s not what my wife married. When my wife married me she

didn‟t

even know I was a philosopher. I was a jurist and a businessman - and not much of either,

maybe,

I was 25 years old. And anyway, there were millions of jurists and businessmen - but she married

me!

What did I have that nobody else had?‟ Who was I? I suddenly saw that the question, “What am

I?,”

didn‟t work. Philosopher? Well, sure, I am a philosopher, I‟m a husband, too. I‟m a commuter,

I‟m

an eater, I‟m a smoker - at that time - no more - I want to live. I‟m a speaker - I‟m a Rotarian - I

was -

good Lord, I was a million things. So, when I tried to put down what I was in order to define

what

would be a good me, I had to draw a circle with a thousand fractions; and I am together in

society

with other such fractions, all of which together form the web of society.

[Hartman‟s figures are not reproduced here].

I‟m a professor. As a professor I‟m in the American Association of University Professors, and

there

I am together with ten thousand other professors. I am a commuter. I commute from Lake Forest

to

Chicago among the other commuters. I am a husband among husbands. I‟m an eater among

eaters.

I‟m a sleeper among sleepers. I‟m a teacher among teachers. I‟m a walker, a driver. Well, I‟m a

collection of a million fractions. Where‟s me - Where‟s I? What is that which all these things

have

in common? Where‟s the core of the whole works? So I said to myself, the whole question is

wrong.

I must not ask what I am - I must ask who I am. Who am I? And then I had to answer myself,

who

am I? I am I. I am the one I am. And this is precisely the property I have to fulfill, the property of

self-consciousness, which I define myself. Whatever I said - I‟m a so and so - I always became

fractioned up. I had to say, “I am the one I am. I am I.” Now strangely enough, I found in the

Bible,

when Moses asked God, “What is your name?” God answered, “I am I. I am the one I am,

Jehova.

The definition showed me that I am made in the image of God.

But now who is the one I am? Well, go back and apply value theory. The definition of me is that

I

am the one who defines himself. Thus, what I have to do to fulfill my definition is to define

myself,

to answer the question:”Who am I?” And who am I? I am I. This is my definition of myself -

pure

self awareness: I am I. The concept I have to fulfill is “I”. or, “I am I,” and when I fulfill this I

am

a good I. How do I fulfill this concept? The first thing I found - and many found this is just

common

philosophy - is that I must not confuse my own intrinsic or moral self with my extrinsic or social

self

- my inner being with the roles I am playing in society, my fundamental I and the social fractions

of

me. That‟s at the bottom of it all. What are the properties that I must fulfill to be I? Well, very

simple

- be myself. And you? Be yourself. And that‟s what every ethics book actually says or should

say:

“To thine own self be true,” as Shakespeare says, and he adds, “It must follow as the night the

day

thou canst not then be false to any man.” All the words of ethics mean that you should be

yourself

-and not fool around being anybody else. Sincerity. What does it mean? That you are yourself.

Honesty - that you are yourself. Integrity? That you are yourself. Authenticity - “He is an

authentic

person” - that you are yourself.

Is it possible not to be yourself? Oh, my God, most of us are not ourselves. We play roles. The

word

person in Latin meant having a mask in front of yourself. “Personal” means “mask.” You play a

role -

we say we play our role in life. I play the role as professor. You play your role whatever it is. But

that‟s not you. That‟s playing a role. The you that is yourself is that core of sincerity within you.

Now

you may, with that core of sincerity, play that role sincerely and then you and your role are one.

But

there are plenty of persons who play a role that is not themselves. I know a woman of 55 who

plays

the role of being a girl of 18. And she walks like that, she dresses like that and she‟s ridiculous -

but

she doesn‟t know it - her self is stunted. There are persons with a fractional or with a stunted self.

There are sicknesses within the self, just as there are sicknesses within the body and within the

mind.

So we are really three parts. There is the Self, there is the body and its social situation, and there

is

the mind. Each of these three parts of ourselves has its own values - and the total value pattern is

the

Personality.

The Three Levels of Value

We can symbolize this total pattern in terms of a cone, with a little flag on top.

Thought

Society

Self

The. Self is the vertical dimension within us. That‟s why we speak of “depth” psychology. We

are

of infinite depth because we can clarify our self-awareness to infinite clarity - to complete

transparency. The more we do it the more we become ourselves and the more power we can

summon

at our disposal in the world. The Self is our reservoir of power. We have infinite power within

us,

infinitely deep down within us. It is not easy to tap this power. We can only tap it if we get rid so

to

speak of the horizontal dimension, that of society and even the little flag on top, thinking. We are

like icebergs. Most of us is underneath and the horizontal part is on top, swimming on the water

like

the top of an iceberg, or even better, like a water lily, very fragile. This horizontal part is our

social

self, the Me rather than the I. It is connected socially with other such selves - and the web of

connections is called Society. Thus, we have the horizontal dimension of society where we have

social intercourse with people, and we have the vertical dimension of the self where we might

say

we have intercourse within our own Self. These are two dimensions of our personality - the

social

and the - well, we call it the existential - but let us call it the human or the spiritual dimension of

the

inner Self.

There is a third dimension - the intellectual - which builds systems and imposes them on society

and

often upon the Self. It is our systemic dimension. The Germans are particularly strong in this.

They

push the systemic to the last consequence - discipline, remember. That‟s their highest value - or

wascome hell or high water, and even if it meant the end of the world. You read about

Eichmann.

Was Eichmann a bad man? Oh, not at all. He did his duty. He said, “I never killed anybody. I am

a

transportation specialist. My work was to make schedules - railroad schedules. That‟s all I did. I

followed my orders. It wasn‟t my business to know who was being put into those railroad cars. I

never put any body in. It wasn‟t my business where they went to. My orders were to make

railroad

schedules and that‟s what I did. I transported people.” Well, he transported them to the fire, but

that

was incidental. He did it with great thoroughness and was proud of it. He was a very systematic

man,

and the system was his life. In his cell in Jerusalem he made every morning at the appointed hour

so many steps in one direction and so many in another. He smoked exactly four cigarettes a day.

He

mopped his floor with exactly the same number of strokes each day. Once, when he was

interrupted

and lost count he was upset all day. Order, that was his value, in both senses of the word. His

trains

went on schedule, and that is all that counted for him. Well, you might say, that is German. But

how

about this one? “I‟m the captain of a submarine. My submarine has 16 nuclear bombs. Every

single

one of these bombs has more fire power than all the bombs ever fired in all wars together - every

single one of them. And when I get my orders I push the button and fire my bombs. That‟s my

duty.

That‟s what I live for. I follow orders. I am a Polaris captain. I transport the fire to the people.

I‟m

a member of a system and I do what the system says I should do.” What‟s the difference with

Eichmann? As long as you are the member of the system, you are the member of a system. You

do

what the system tells you.

This is systemic value. It is amoral - as is the law and as is science. Both are systems. This

amorality

maybe immoral, and it may also be moral. It all depends how the system is being used. We can‟t

live

without systemic values - but we mustn‟t overdo them. This is what my own value theory taught

me.

All the other value s are more important than systemic values, no matter how important are

systemic

values. Once there was something wrong with my railroad travel card. I go to the office to

complain

and the man calls: “Miss Jones, bring me No. B33725.” That was me. For him I was a number,

and

rightly so. Railroading is a big system. Life is full of systemic values. In the army you are a

number -

in prison you‟re a number - in the hospital you‟re a number. One nurse says to the other, “I‟m

giving

a wash to No. 382". No. 382 is not even you -that‟s the room you‟re in. The world is full of

systemic

values. But at times, systemic values may collide with your own individuality. People have a fine

sense for this, but not fine enough. They rebel against new telephone numbers without letters, but

they don‟t rebel against nuclear bombs. They seem to be rebelling against flying jets, for the

airlines

are losing money due to low traffic. I myself don‟t like to fly; those planes they are too systemic

for

me. I know the thing is so exactly figured out that if the slightest thing goes wrong I‟m down.

And

I know that if a little screw of 1 inch is lost in the tail assembly of a 707, that‟s my end. A plane

is

a mental construction - it‟s up there by the pure laws of physics. It has a million parts put

together

by man and man simply isn‟t up to the perfection of systems. From time to time something must

go

wrong.. That‟s what you in the insurance business live on. You live on the fact that man is very

good

systemically but not quite good enough. Most planes stay up but enough fall down for you to get

business. You would be out of business (a) if no plane ever would come down and (b) if all

would

comedown. So there‟s a very subtle balance in the universe between the perfect and the

imperfect

which can be figured out by statistical laws. Most people are alive but all of us will die one day.

Most of us are healthy today but 1/64 percent of us will be sick tomorrow. Catastrophes are not a

part

of your insurance contract - always there is that fine print for the so-called acts of God, which

actually are acts of the Devil. Of course, if it‟s not too huge a disaster you get together and call

that

reinsurance. It‟s all figured out. All roads, automobiles and many other hazards. You can figure

out

exactly - not when some thing will happen but that something‟s got to happen.

A friend of mine came to Mexico this summer with his family; they rented a beautiful house

which

had nothing but glass doors and glass windows. Such perfect glass that you didn‟t see there was

anything. They had six children and they came in the beginning of June. I said to myself, by

statistical necessity with six children, four grown-ups and all these glass walls and windows,

there

is bound to happen something. I said to them, “Listen, with all these kids you better put some

paper

or some warning signs on those doors and windows. Otherwise, one of those kids, or you

yourself

will just walk through - it happened to me almost.” “Oh, no,” they said, “We are very intelligent”

-

college presidents, you know, university presidents. “We are very careful.” Sure enough, on their

last

day when they wanted to leave, one of the little girls walked through the door and had to go to

the

hospital. This is absolutely statistically certain. If it hadn‟t happened to them it would have

happened

to others. All the cars are going beautifully on the highway, but you know that every big week-

end

385 drivers will die. Then comes in the actual statistics and it was 386. Nobody wanted it. The

world

is perfect but it has a little flaw of contingency, as we call it, which is not so perfect. The human

mind is simply not up to complete perfection. Therefore, this.terrific danger of an accidental war.

By 1965 there will be 65,000 buttons, any one of which can start a war. It‟s statistically certain

that

it must happen. “Fail safe” must sometime fail - read the novel by Burdick and Wheeler - and a

failure in that system is like a pilot‟s failure - it can only be made once.

So this is the statistical and systemic dimension of value. It is very necessary. When your wife

goes

to the hospital to get her child, she gets a number, and the child also gets a number, and you hope

they‟ll both get the same number. The systemic is very important for very important things in our

life but it is not all-important.

Now the social dimension. Here we get together with our so-called fellow man in the so-called

society for so-called fellowship. The insurance people get together - I bet you have an Insurance

Association of America where you. are together with your insurance fellows as insurance men.

But

I bet your wife very seldom goes with you, or if she does, she won‟t understand what goes on. If

I

would go with you I won‟t know what is going on. And if you would go with me to my

philosophy

association, you wouldn‟t understand a word. So the world is split up socially into classes; and

when

Karl Marx spoke of classes he meant social classes, but they are also logical classes. People get

classified; everyone is in his own section and valued as a so-and-so. This we call social value or

extrinsic value. We are extrinsically valued. You are valued as good insurance men. I am valued

as

a good teacher. We are valued by the railroad or airline as good commuters. The more tickets we

buy, the more they value us. They make us “Ambassadors,” give us “The Red Carpet” treatments

etc. Usually money values are extrinsic values. They are limited values - you wouldn‟t sell your

baby

or buy a wife. The intrinsic value level which is you in your own depth is infinitely more

important

than all systems and all money in the world.

Now to give you an example of how all three levels get together. Let‟s say that a young fellow

goes

into a store to buy a package of cigarettes. There is a vending girl and he says, “I want a package

of

Marlboros.” She says, “Here you are.” “How much,” he says. She says, “27 cents.” She gives it

to

you, you give her 27¢, you say, “Goodbye.” She says, “Goodbye, thank you.” What kind of a

relationship was that? That was a purely systemic relationship, a legal sales contract. You paid

27¢,

and she gave you a package of cigarettes. Now she could have been a vending machine. You

didn‟t

need a girl for that. I think they have machines now that say, “Thank you.” It could have been a

machine - you put in 27¢ and out popped the package - and it was exactly the same contract -

mind

you, girl or no girl.

So that was a systemic relationship, there wasn‟t much to it. Next day you go into that same store

and there is that same girl and you say, “A Marlboro,” and she says, “Oh, yes, you want a

Marlboro -

27¢.” And you say, “Yeh, 27¢ ,”and then you look at her. My gosh, she‟s a girl. And you look at

her

again and you think, “My, she looks pretty nice.” And you say, “How long have you been in

Columbus?” “Oh,” she says, “Three months,” and you say, “Where do you come from?” “Oh, I

come

from Detroit.”Before you know they talk to each other about the weather, of course, then about

father

and mother and so on. They make conversation. That‟s also a relationship. It‟s also a give and

take,

but it‟s a social one, not a legal one. It‟s a social relationship. You have moved from the

systemic,

which has no properties except one, to a social relationship which can have an infinity of

properties.

Because you can talk to her for a whole day. By gosh, you like her. So there‟s a little sofa there,

and

you sit in the corner and just see how she does her job, and when there are no customers she talks

to you. One day, you say to her, “Let‟s go out to have dinner at the Inn in Worthington of

Nationwide.”

“Boy,” she says, “Are you that rich?” Well, they go there and they have a wonderful time. Now

imagine how they have added to their relationship. Their relationship has become richer. We can

define value as “enrichment of properties. The richer in properties something is, the more value

it

has. The poorer in properties something is, the less value it has. They enriched their properties.

It‟s

like a cake. You can make a very lean cake and you can add and add and add and at the end it‟s a

humdinger of a cake - tremendous, whipped cream and God knows what - as they make them in

Austria. Enrichment of properties. The two have that evening at the Inn and others like it - all the

time enriching their relationship - until it takes in their whole being. And one day, as they meet

he

says to her or she says to him, “When do we marry?” And before you know it they stand in front

of

the minister, and one says to the other, “I stay with you in sickness and health, richness and

poorness,

till death do us part.”

Well, they‟ve come a long way from the vending contract. Now they‟re husband and wife, and a

true

marriage, love, has nothing whatsoever to do with a social relationship. It is a relationship from

inner

core to inner core. Love is this relationship here.

And she doesn‟t give a hang how much money he has and who his father is or his mother - not

perhaps even his race - she‟s a very sensitive girl wide awake to herself and her world. And he

doesn‟t give a hang about her background, her money, her career. He loves her, she loves him

and.

they get together. How do they know they love each other? Because- they have gone within

themselves and they have inquired within and they have asked themselves.- I speak of a real love

marriage, where people are really clear about what they do - “Who is this person” - not “What is

this

person?” And he sees that person, that young girl of 18, as the grandmother of his own

grandchildren

- when his own children haven‟t even been conceived yet. That inner Self leaps over space and

time,

it sees the whole of life at one glance. It has happened that you saw a girl and in the first glance

you

knew that it was your wife. I don‟t know whether that happened to anyone of you, I had a girl in

my

class at MIT - there are some girls there too -she told me this. “I was sitting in your class and in

came

a boy. I looked at him and I said to myself, there is my husband. Well, he sat down with a friend

of

his at the other end of the room.” After my class she followed him. He went with his friend to a

drugstore, sat down and had ice cream. And she said, “I sat down right beside him and after three

months we were married.” And they‟re still very happily married.

An immediate intuition is the main characteristic of that inner self. It is born from transparent

clarity

of oneself. I tell you how I met my own wife. When I was 25, I was invited to a friend‟s house,

some

older gentleman, and he had a glass cabinet with dishes in it. Very nice, Rosenthal and so on,

which

had a glass door. I was admiring these sets of glass - I was standing in front of it, my back to the

room, looking at the glass cabinet. Suddenly I see in that glass door, among the dishes, the face

of

a girl, who was standing behind me. And as truly as I am standing here in front of you, I was

there

looking at that girl in the mirror, and I said to myself, “There‟s my wife.” And then I remember

like

today, I said to myself, “You‟re crazy, man, you‟re 25. Men don‟t marry, onlv women do. That is

not your business - I mean, to give up your freedom at 25 years of. age. Let the women do that.

But

not me.” And then I said to myself, “How do I know that this is, my wife?” And my answer was

this,

and I remember it like today. I said to myself, “Just as this is your little finger, this is your wife,

and

you can‟t do a thing about it.”

Now I was standing with my back to the room. So she saw me only from the back. And at the

same

moment she said to herself, “There‟s my husband.” And when I left she said to her mother, “I‟m

going to marry that guy.” Her mother said, “You‟re crazy” - and she was. For I told you how I

was

raised, a disciplinarian, a perfectionist, systemic value was my value. She had a rough row to

hoe.

But when I found out that this disciplinarian, professional efficiency was not all there was to me,

I

found that the love of my wife and my love to her was more important than anything. I found

that

out through George E. Moore and through trying to define myself according to value theory. I

became a different person. Much better to live with says my wife, and that‟s true. I found the real

value. Let us now go into the depth of this self dimension.

The Infinity of the Self

First, let us remember my original question: What is goodness and how can we make goodness

as

efficient in the world as badness. The answer is that goodness is richness of qualities, that these

qualities must be those of the thing in question, that is, those which define the thing - if I have a

boil

in the middle of my face, my face is not richer in (face-) qualities than without a boil - and that,

hence, a thing has value in the degree that it fulfills its definition. I have moral value in the

degree

that I fulfill my own definition of myself. This definition is: “I am I.” Thus, in the degree that I

am

I, I am a morally good person. Moral goodness is the depth of mans own being himself. This is

the

greatest goodness in the world. If everyone of us and everyone in the world would just be

himself

and follow his own inner self or, as we say, the voice of his conscience, then everything would

straighten itself out, all the problems would just fall by the wayside. We wouldn‟t listen to false

prophets, to politicians, to those who want to use us for their own ambitions. We would just be

ourselves. We would know the true values. As Larissa, in Pasternak‟s Dr. Zhivago says to her

dead

friend Zhivago at the end of the book, “The riddle of life, the riddle of death, the enchantment of

genius, the enchantment of unadorned beauty - yes, yes, these things were ours. But the small

worries

of practical life -things like the reshaping of the planet - these things, no thank you, they are not

for

us.” Little things like the reshaping of the planet! The whole world is nothing compared to the

value

of the infinite Self, the riddle of its life and death, its awareness of beauty, its genius.

This does not mean that we must not be social and not be intelligent. On the contrary, the more

we

are ourselves the more we have both social and intellectual power - in a free society. I am still a

philosopher and I am still a disciplinarian and I am still a systematic thinker. This is how I make

my

living. I try to think with absolute exactness about these deep values, and I try too make them

intellectually articulate. The trouble has been that these deep values have been known vaguely,

intuitively, in a shallow sense of the word, that we haven‟t been able to articulate them. My job

in

the world is too make these previously vague and intuitive things intellectually clear. The

method

of axiology or value theory looks very cold but is awfully hot inside. We always say that the

difference between us and the Russians is that we believe in the value of the individual. That we

believe that man is made in the image of God. That man is of infinite value. But the Communists

always say with great justification - and I don‟t think anyone in this room has had so many

discussions with Communists as I have - they way with great justification, “What do you mean

by

that? This is all words. At best it is sentimentality.” And when you look at our politics in the

world -

where we give tit for tat to the Communists - it is awfully hard to see how we put these intrinsic

values into politics. The larger the situation the harder it is to deal with it intuitively. In order to

actualize moral values in the world we absolutely need an instrument of clear intellectual thought

that will make these values transparent to everybody; or, at first, at least to the minds of the

intelligent people everywhere, or even the intellectuals, which is not the same as the intelligent.

Some of the most intellectual people I know are the most unintelligent. An intelligent person is

really

a person who can mobilize his inner resources, the infinite power within him, for the

management

of his own life. An intellectual is a person who merely knows how to think. Communists outside

of

Russia are usually intellectuals. They want to understand the laws of society; and Karl Marx was

an

alchemist who gave them some pseudo-laws. They are content with them for there is really

nothing

of comparable intellectual vigor in the Western world. Thus, we have to make at least

intellectually

clear what we mean by the value of the individual. Communism in Latin America, as it was in

China,

is not a matter of the people, of the workers or peasants; it is a matter of the intellectuals.

I meet Americans all the time who say, me, I am so and so. I have a newspaper in this and this

city

and I do everything to propagate our values, the value of the individual. When I ask, “What do

you

mean by the value of the individual?” usually these guys either don‟t say anything, or it turns out

that

what they mean is their own right to make a lot of money. They really mean money value. I get

disgusted with these people. They play into the hands of the Communists. So my job is to

articulate

these things. What is the value of the individual and in which sense is it infinite?

The first who divined the infinite value of man was the psalmist who said that man was made

just

a little lower than the angels. The first who articulated this infinite value of the human person -

not

in the language that we use, in the language that I am talking to you now, but in a different kind

of

language as we shall see tomorrow - was Jesus. He saw and demonstrated the infinite value of

the

individual. The first man after Jesus who clearly described this same infinite value was a young

man

in Italy by the name of Pico della Mirandola who, at the height of the Renaissance, discovered

the

new world of man‟s infinite spirit, at exactly the same time, around 1492, that Columbus

discovered

the new world of America. Pico write a speech entitled “On the Dignity of the Human Being.”

There

he describes man in a very wonderful parable: When God had created the earth and had made the

animals and the vegetables and the minerals and put all the parts of the world in their places,

there

was missing one being which would not be bound to any position at all but could take any

position

and could mirror the whole creation within himself, including God. This being was man. And so

God

created Adam as the one who would be able to appreciate God‟s own creation and be able to take

any place in creation that he wanted, who could live like a vegetable or like an angel, like a

rapacious

animal or like a saint. Ours is the whole range of creation. We can just vegetate, or we can rise

on

the wings of the spirit almost to God. There is no limit whatsoever to our capacity. We are

infinite

and of infinite power.

I always say too the students when they ask me, “What‟s a genius,” “You are a genius.” For a

genius

is nothing but a person who can put all his power into one thought. And when a student says,

“But

I have no power,” I said to his neighbor, “Try and strangle that guy. You‟ll see what powers he

develops.” There is infinite power in us even physically. Have you heard the story of that little

ole

woman, weighing 110 pounds, whose son was lying in the garage under a Buick of 2 ½ tons

when

the jack broke; and the little woman of 110 pounds - and I think she was asthmatic too - went

into

the garage, lifted that 2 ½ ton Buick from that boy, put her leg under the car, pulled him out, and

broke her own back in the process? Well, that‟s what we c all a miracle. A miracle is nothing but

summoning the infinite resources within us. That we have these infinite resources can be proved

as

a fact, empirically, actually, and it can be proved logically. I hope none of you will ever have to

go

through a situation when you have to prove it actually. But if you have a crisis in a deep sickness

it

depends on your own power whether want to be healthy or not. And this is true of pulling

through

any crisis. After the war, I saw those skeletons of the concentration camps, men weighing 50 and

60

pounds. They were talking to me and they told me how they had walked a hundred and two

hundred

miles before they were liberated, the Germans were chasing them out of the concentration camps

when the Americans were coming, everyone was shot who stumbled. They said, “We heard the

American planes over us and whenever we heard them we got more power and we could walk

and

walk. There was a power that sustained us that came from somewhere - I don‟t know where. And

we had it as long as we needed it.” These are crisis situations when you get your power. A genius

is a man in a continuous crisis. He gets his power all the time.

So it is empirically, by experience provable that we have infinite, truly infinite power. Whenever

you

read the stories of science, like Newton, or of art like Bach or Michelangelo, whenever these

men

are asked how they could produce such beautiful works day in and day out, they always gave the

same answer throughout the ages: “Anybody can do it who doesn‟t do anything else day and

night.”

As Newton said, “I keep the problem continuously before my eyes.” He lived it. Galileo said,

when

asked how he could find the law of movement, “I became a falling body,” meaning that he

converted

himself into a falling tone and thought as a falling stone. A genius is a person who puts his whole

self into a problem. That‟s not necessarily a good person from a moral point of view - he‟s just a

genius you see. Newton was a pretty mean customer. But he was a great man.

A great good man is a Saint. Now a saint is a person who puts his whole power, all the resources

of

himself, into his own goodness, a man who has discovered his oneness with all creation, all men,

all

animals, even all things. He lives within the depth of everybody else. He is a man of infinite

compassion. This is the deepest intrinsic goodness - infinite compassion. To live so deeply and

transparently within ourselves that we live deeply and compassionately within every human

being,

indeed every living being - indeed, every being. As St. Francis said to Brother Leo when he tried

to

extinguish the fire on St. Francis‟ coat, “Brother Leo, be careful with Brother Fire.” As Albert

Schweitzer who feels pain at having to kill the bacteria when he does an operation. Compassion

is

the touchstone of moral value.

I am not talking Bible here. I mean it as an actual experience in the very sense that whenever you

see

someone happy or someone suffering, some of your fellow-man in trouble, that it eats your heart

out.

Now I hope there are some people like this in this room. If you feel with the suffering fellowman

and

you can‟t tear yourself away from him and you suffer as he does, then you know what I mean. I

mean

the sensitivity that is the intrinsic value of your being one with all humanity. For - and now

comes

the main thing - this infinity within us means that with our intrinsic self we are not in space and

time.

Space and time are finite. Infinity - the infinity of your inner self - means that you are not bound

to

anything in space and time, you are outside of space and time. That‟s why we can immediately

intuit

that this girl is our wife. We see the whole of our future in just one glance - we are not in time.

Love

is not in time - years with the beloved are just a second - and a moment with her can be eternity.

]Friendship is not in time. I once happened to come through Sao Paulo in Brazil. I had nothing to

do

in the evening and just leafed through the telephone book. Suddenly I see a name that was

exactly

like the name of a boy I had seen last about 35 years ago in my class in Munich. Well, I though,

call

him up. I was then about 50, and when I left Munich I was about 15, so it was some 35 years

ago.

I call him up. I said, “I am so and so.” He said, “what - are you the one I went to school with in

Munich? Yes! My god, my best friend!” He came with his car, and 35 years were erased like

nothing.

Friendship is not in time. Nor is it in space. Love and friendship are outside of space. I came to

America with my family in 1938 at the day of Munich when I was the representative of Walt

Disney

in Scandinavia. I went to Hollywood to Walt Disney and said, “ I‟m through with Europe; there

will

be a war.” He didn‟t believe me but finally give me his representation in Mexico and Central

America. I go back to Sweden to liquidate the business, leaving my wife and the baby in

Hollywood.

One day I am sitting in the house of my parents-in-law in Stockholm reading the paper when it

flashed through my mind, “My wife is sick.” I take the telephone call from Stockholm to

Hollywood,

an nurse answers and says my wife is in a crisis, but she‟ll be all right. Love is not in space and

time.

I bet many of you have had similar experiences.

The infinity of the Self is a fact of experience, an empirical fact that is proved by experience. It is

also a mathematical certainty. It can be demonstrated intellectually. I will give you two of the

many

proofs of the infinity of the human being. These intellectual proofs are completely undeniable.

What

I have said so far, somebody can say, “Well, it isn‟t so. People can say what you about I don‟t

understand. I‟ve never had such an experience. I am from Missouri. Show me. So far, what you

have

said is nonsense.” Now I shall give you two proofs nobody can deny. The first is the proof from

the

Identity of the Self, the second is the proof from the Infinite Regress of the I.

First the proof from Identity. What is the I? The I is that which makes one person out of the

infinite

fractions of my life in time and space. I‟m standing here before you, 1962, August 30 (which

happens to be my Wedding Day). I was born on January 27, on the Emperor‟s birthday in

Bendlerstrasse near the War Ministry in Berlin. When I was born I looked very different from

what

I look now. Every moment of our lives we are different. Now you are sitting out there and then

you

go home, then you travel somewhere else. You were boys in high school, you were babies. You

will

be old men. Now, all these moments must belong to you, the self-same person. You must be able

to

say, “I was born 40 years ago there and then. And it is I who is now here. Thus I pull together

our

moments in space and time. It is the concept which makes out of my space-time moments one

whole.

“I”

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Me at Birth Me now Me at Death

There are primitive tribes who are like babies; they cannot say “I.” When Molubabeba speaks of

his

childhood he does not speak of himself or of “I” but of “Molubabeba child.” That was another

one.

The sun of today is another sun from the one yesterday. It takes abstract thinking to grasp

together

our moments in time. All the me‟s together are the I. “I” is the concept of the me‟s. It is the

concept

of my moments in time and space. It is my concept of identity in time and space. How many

moments do I have? 52 years. How many days do I have? 52 times 365 -18, 980 days. How

many

hours do I have? 455,520. How many minutes? How many seconds? There is an infinity of sub-

divisions I can make. My boy once asked me, “Daddy, what‟s a hemisphere?” “Well,” I said, “A

hemisphere is half an earth.” Well,” he said, “Which half? Where does the half run?” I said,

“You

stand like this, spread your legs.” He did. And I said, “It runs right between your legs.” Sure, you

can

make the cut of the hemisphere anywhere you like, an infinity of cuts. So you have an infinity of

life

moments, and all of these have to be put together. As a matter of fact, you didn‟t begin with your

birth. You started with your conception. But, of course, once you go back that far then you didn‟t

start there either. You started really with your father and mother. But they had to be conceived

too;

hence you didn‟t start there either but with the grandparents, and so on back and back - actually

you

began with the beginning of creation. That‟s what Walt Whitman says in “The Song of Myself.”

Immense have been the preparations for me,

Faithful and friendly the arms that have help‟d me.

Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,

For room for me stars kept aside in their own rings,

They sent influences to look after what was to hole me.

Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,

My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it.

For it the nebula cohered into an orb,

The long slow strata piled to rest it on,

Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,

Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and

deposited it with care.

All forces have been steadily employ‟d to complete and delight me,

Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.

I‟m a result of evolution. Whitman didn‟t know that word. I‟m the result of creation. I began in

infinity, and where do I end? Do I end with my death? Well, there‟s my son, there‟s my

granddaughter. I am a link in the chain of generations on earth. But moreover, I am immortal.

My

Self, my spirit, we said, is not in space and time. How then can it die in space and time? It cannot

die. Body and mind may fall away, but the spirit, my awareness of my own Self within the whole

of

creation, must continue. I come from infinity, I go to infinity. The German poet Goethe has

said,”

I am immortal in the degree that I have lived immortally” - that I have lived wide awake in the

fullness of my own awareness. I am a prodigy of creation - Whitman is right. And if I live like a

vegetable I have let down creation.

Thus, when I say “I”, I encompass all creation. I am, says Kierkegaard, anchored with my own

Self

at the source of creation itself. I not only express the infinitely many moments of my terrestrial

life,

I express the whole span of all life between the infinity that was and the infinity that is to be.

This was a philosophical proof of my infinity. Still, someone might deny it, though this is hard to

do. Even communists must acknowledge the infinite causal chain from which they came. Even

they

must acknowledge that the Self is what puts me together, integrates me, and that there are

sicknesses

in the self which arise from the sick self‟s incapacity to put the me‟s together. They have their

schizophrenics just as we do. Such people are split within themselves, schizoid - apart. They are

two

in one, or three in one. Some of you have seen the movie or read the book Three Faces of Eve.

Let

me give you an experience of myself. I have a seminar of psychoanalysts, depth psychologists,

who

want to know about value. They tell me about their cases, and we analyze these from the point of

view of the value of selfhood and of axiology. One case was the following.

A lady married with a banker, having a very lovely family, beautiful house in one of the suburbs

of

Mexico City, lovely husband, lovely children, a good housewife and a good mother - but every

Tuesday and every Thursday she goes, as she says, to play canasta with her girl friends. Actually

she

goes behind the slums of the city as a prostitute. Gets $2.00 for each prostitution. Comes home at

4 in the morning, says she won at canasta, and wonders what has happened. She vaguely feels

there

is something wrong with her, so she goes to the psychoanalyst. Now what‟s the matter with that

woman? She‟s a schizophrenic. She‟s two, you see. She has a self-contradiction within herself.

Her

self-definition is not “I am I” but “I am not I.” And fulfilling this definition she splits apart. She

can‟t

live, she doesn‟t want to live. Her giving herself to these bums is her way of killing herself, and

in

order not to kill herself physically she kills herself morally. And the money gives her a special

satisfaction, a token of appreciation, which she has never gotten before. Her husband has no idea

of

that, nor have the children, nor has she in a way because she doesn‟t know when she does one

thing

what other thing she does. She has no identity. The same with Eve. Eve Lancaster was the wife,

or

is the wife, of a farmer in Alabama. On certain days she went to the city, all made up beautifully

and

prostitutes herself. Then, finished with the business, she went back to her farmer and became a

firm

woman. She was so exactly split that the psychiatrist could call forth the different persons within

her.

He called the one “black Eve” and the other “white Eve.” When she was the firm girl he said, “I

want

to talk to black Eve,” and immediately she changed and became a prostitute, and she talked as

black

Eve. When he said, “I want white Eve,” immediately she became a farm woman and was white

Eve.

When we don‟t put ourselves together then we are no one but many, split up in our space and

time

sections without connection, and almost physically many although we are one body.

The Self is the integration of ourselves, that which gives us integrity, that which pulls us

together.

This then is the first proof of the Self‟s infinity - it can pull itself together into one, concentrate

itself,

or it can fall apart into an infinite number of fragments, and “we go to pieces.” Our time and

space

fragments stay apart. The self pulls these fragments together, in the awareness of itself, and the

knowledge of me within the space-time world. The self, in other words, has remembrance, and it

has

anticipation. It remembers who I was yesterday and it anticipates who I will be tomorrow. In

order

to do this it must be beyond space and time. For space is only now and here; so in order to have

memory I have to be outside of time. In order to have anticipation and project the course of my

life,

I have to be outside of time, too. In order to have imagination I have to be outside of space and

time.

All this the I does, not the me, not my body, not my mind. My inner self uses my body and my

mind.

In the first proof I have shown you how the I uses my body, my corporeal presence, in order to

express itself as one in time, pulling all the separate moments of this presence together into one.

In

the second proof I shall show you how it uses my mind.

Awareness

My self is, as I said, aware of itself and knows me. Now let us see what this means. We come

now

to the infinite regress of the I.

When I say, “I know myself” - or “I know me,” to make it easier - what does the I know? The I

knows me. But who knows the I? The I who does the knowing only knows the me; it doesn‟t

know

itself. There are two roles in me: I am a knower and I am a known. I am a subject and I am an

object.

But the knower is the I and the known is the Me. The I knows the Me by applying itself to the

Me -

my situation in space and time, my emotions, my thoughts, etc. - and the I can do this by its own

self-

awareness. But just as the optical eye seeing cannot see itself, so the self knowing cannot know

itself.

If I want to know the I, I have to make a met out of it. I have to say, “I know me knowing me.”

knowing me,” Now I know the first I as a me; but there appears another I that does the knowing

and

is not known. I can make a me out of it and say, “I know me knowing me knowing me,” and thus

know the second I as a me - an object of knowledge; but there appears a third I as subject of

knowledge, and it is not known. And so on ad infinitum. There is always another self that cannot

be

known. Thus, there are infinite levels within the self. There is always a residue which is

unknown

to me and has to be known by something else than self-knowledge. I can only be aware of this

final

residue of myself. This awareness is a very different thing from knowing.

Some people know everything but are aware of nothing, others are aware of everything and

know

nothing. The first are informed fools, the second uninformed sages. The first are intellectuals

who

have no moral insight, the second are simple people with moral insight. Some of the most

“remarkable characters I have known” were of this second kind - and usually what the Readers‟

Digest calls such characters are these kind of people - simple but of great insight and dignity.

In Mexico we once had a maid by the name of Maria. She was just a girl and a housemaid. She

came

with us at the age of 16, bare feet, and it took me a long time to get her used to shoes. She was

with

us for 15 years. She ran the house, she ran us, she was aware of everything - she was wide awake

-

but she didn‟t know a thing. She hardly knew that 2 plus 2 equals 4. Yet there was a radiance and

a spirit in her that made everything around her true and real. When she was not around the world

wasn‟t as it should be, and my wife and I were depressed. She knew exactly what she wanted.

There

was a continuous struggle between her and my wife. My wife put the lamp here, the next day it

was

there. My wife put it back here, the next day it was back there. That went on for years. She knew

exactly what she wanted, that girl - she still does. We imported her to the United States, and

finally

she decided she wanted to marry, unfortunately. But then she was 31 and had a right to marry,

but

we were sad and tried to dissuade her. But again, she knew exactly what she wanted. She got

herself

a fellow from Mexico, married him; we imported him, too; but he couldn‟t find work in

Columbus

and didn‟t want to live in our house, so finally they moved to Chicago.

Now, our friends in Chicago are long-hairs, eggheads, professors, lawyers, and so on. We told

them

Maria was coming and please let her work for you one day a week and so we wrote to six of

them,

for Maria wanted to work with a different one each day in order to be independent and make

more

money. Then my wife and I leaned back and wondered what was going to happen, for that girl

had

something. It didn‟t take more than three weeks when the wife of one of our friends, a great

corporation lawyer, wrote too my wife, “What kind of a girl have you sent us? Whenever she

comes

into the house everything becomes radiant, and it becomes so peaceful that my husband only

goes

to the office when she has left. Complete awareness - and she knows nothing. But she lives

completely, she lives in the vertical dimension - she LIVES. That is why we call this

existentialism.

All you have to be is to be. To be fully. This is called awareness, and it is a different thing from

knowing. You are aware of yourself and if you are not aware of yourself you don‟t live. You

may

be a big shot, but you don‟t live. You may be a whiz, you may be the best in your profession, and

you‟re dead. Kierkegaard called this The Sickness unto Death: to be completely alive to the

world

and completely dead to the spirit.

Maria was completely alive to the spirit and alive to the world only within her small circle of

cleaning houses. But if you are completely alive to the spirit you have all you need, and your

knowledge of the world will grow by itself in the degree you need it.

Maria‟s circle gradually widened. Her husband got a good position, she had her own household,

and

they prospered. One day, here in Columbus, when we had a lot of guests invited, suddenly, about

9

p.m., drives up a Buick as long as a telescope - convertible, automatic windows, a big flower

bouquet

sticking out of it. We thought, who‟s that, who did we miss - when out climbs Maria, with the

flower

bouquet very elegant, with her husband. They had come over from Chicago to pay us a visit.

Maria

comes in, gives us the flower bouquet, sees we are having a party, puts on an apron, and

immediately

takes over everything. “I take charge of this.” So, my wife could be a hostess, which American

women usually can‟t be because they have to be in the kitchen. Maria served, with complete

grace

and elegance, washes the dishes, cleans the ash trays, and everything goes wonderfully. When

the

party is over, about 12 or so, she says they go back to Chicago. They had just wanted to visit us.

But

before she left, she pushes me into a corner and she says, “Senor, I really came to tell you the

following. We Are pretty well off, We‟re making a lot of money and you are just a professor - I

want

you to know that whenever you are in trouble you call on us,”. Well, thank God,. she‟s back in

Mexico now, having her own house and running her own business with her husband.

Now that person is so fully herself that she doesn‟t have to give herself another thought. Her self

is

not in the way of her Self. She is, as we call it, transparent to herself. I Hence, she can pour all

her

energies into serving others - she lives for others. She gives herself fully to others. A person who

is

so transparently herself that she lives only for others we call a saint. Maria‟is a small-gauge saint.

A great saint is a person who matches the depth of his own .being with the width of his

intellectual

horizon. Such a person was Jesus. Such a person, perhaps is Albert Schweitzer. There is a slight

approximation to this kind of person-in every Most Remarkable Character I‟ve Met in The

Readers‟

Digest. You will find that these most remarkable characters are never big bankers or politicians

but

always small people who give themselves to others.

Thus, the best combination of being a real person is to be completely alive to the world outside

of

us and completely aware of the spirit within us. Unfortunately, our intellect often blocks our self-

development. The more intelligent you are the more cocky you become, and you think you are

the

boss of creation. This hinders you to be aware of yourself because to be aware of yourself you

have

to be humble. You have to be and nothing else - and that‟s the hardest thing to do for you have to

forget about your achievements in the world - you have to give up your worldly pride. So when

the

students ask me, “Now what in the world is that being,”I say, “It‟s awfully hard to explain. You

just

be - don‟t be cocky, don‟t be smart this or don‟t be that. Just Be. Your smartness is in the way of

your being.” “Well,” the student says, “if I‟m not smart you give me bad grades.” “Ah,” I say,

“I‟m

your teacher in a course in philosophy, I‟m not your teacher in Being. However, I can also be

your

teacher in Being. But then you‟ll get no grades at all, everything in Being is infinite.” Some do

understand, but most of them do not. So I finally say, “Well, look here, your inner self, your

humble

being is that which makes dogs lick you. That‟s all.” What I mean is that with our inner self we

go

down, down, down, to the bottom of creation. We have oneness with dogs, we have oneness with

the whole of creation. So the dogs think they are people or you are a dog. So they come and lick

you.

Another symptom of this is the reaction of children. My wife can‟t go into a room with children

before they are all over her. With me, they are a little more reserved. You all have had the

experience

in grade school and even in high school that a teacher came into the classroom and either the

whole

class broke loose with noise or it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Children sense the self-

awareness of a person; and in the degree that the person respects himself he is respected by

others.

Another symptom of the Self is conscience. You have done something bad, nobody saw you, not

a

soul was there. Then you come back among people and, by golly, you feel everybody knows the

bad

thing you have done. None of us has ever done a really bad thing, but even the little bad things

we

do now and then give us a bad conscience. And a bad conscience means you are afraid

everybody

knows with you - con-science. The classic on this feeling-that-everybody-knows is the novel by

Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment. A student, Raskolnikov, slays an evil old woman for

money.

It‟s the perfect crime, yet he feels that everybody knows, for seven hundred pages. He finally

gives

himself up, he cannot live with his terrible guilt. None of us has ever done a horrible crime like

that,

something irreversible, irreparable. The little things we do, we can always say, tomorrow I‟ll

stop.

We might never stop, but at least it‟s a possibility.

Now, why do we have the feeling that everybody knows? Because the inner self is not in space

and

time. So where is it? Everywhere. In other words, in that inner core of our Self we are

intrinsically

one with every other Self. The cones of our Selfhood all meet at the vertex. There is one

community,

one core, of all mankind. This realm is what Jesus calls the Kingdom of God that is within us.

We

are all one; and when we do a bad thing everybody has done it with us because I intrinsically we

are

all one. So in my self everyone has done the bad things and that is why I am afraid that everyone

knows. Everyone has really done it with me. So I am responsible for everybody else and

everybody

else is responsible for me. This is the meaning of love. You are connected much deeper than in

space

and time with the ones you love. And you may hurt them intrinsically although they may never

know

it. That is why Jesus says that it is not evil deeds that count but already evil thoughts and desires.

“Ye

have heard that it was said by them of old time, „Thou shalt not kill...‟ But I say unto you, That

whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. Ye have

heard that it was said by them of old time, „Thou shalt not commit adultery.” But I say unto you,

That

whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his

heart.” (Mat. 5) In the depth of the Self is the true reality - and here you hurt and you help those

you

love. And those you love ought to be all your fellowmen. Therefore, another symptom of your

own

being fully yourself is compassion - compassion with every living being, compassion, the very

touchstone, as we said, of your being yourself - and thus being one with every other being.

Compassion, suffering within you the suffering of the other, is “the greatest of them all,” as says

St.

Paul; greater than faith and hope is charity. Hence the abysmal evil of the great states -Christian

and

otherwise - who prepare suffering for millions of human beings today - and our abysmal guilt in

condoning these preparations for monstrous suffering, ane even abetting them. “The State,” said

Nietzsche, “what is that? Well! open now your ears to me, for now will I say unto you my word

concerning the death of peoples.” We do not live in the intrinsic world of the Self. We life

mostly

in the extrinsic world of things and he systemic world of dogmas and ideologies. And they

threaten

to engulf us.

What we have to do is to combine all three levels of value, to live in all three worlds. It will not

do

to just live in the intrinsic, as it will not do to just live in the extrinsic or the systemic. It will not

do

just to be intrinsic or sensitive and then be a bum. That is possible. It is possible, as I say, to be

aware

of everything and to know nothing. And, as we shall see, Jesus, who emphasized the intrinsic

nature

of ourselves, did not entirely deny the other natures, although he denied them to a certain degree.

But

he said we should be smart as snakes, and he did many actions, such as riding into Jerusalem,

which,

though symbolic of the Eternal, were yet actions within the finite. I must be sensitive, I must be

compassionate, but I must be intelligent also, I must be a disciplinarian. I can‟t be an accountant

without discipline. I can‟t be an airline pilot without discipline. When I take a plane I‟m not

interested in the pilot‟s compassion and intrinsic nature. I want him to know that plane backward

and

forward. I am interested in his systemicness. I‟m not interested in the fidelity of my surgeon to

his

wife. What I‟m interested in is that he knows how to put that needle exactly where it belongs.

The Integration of the Three Levels of Value

However, and this is the important thing, you cannot fully be systemic or extrinsic unless you are

fully intrinsic, fully yourself. In other words, the moral man will also be a better accountant,

pilot,

or surgeon. The value dimensions are within each other. The systematic, the social, and the

human

envelop each other. The human contains the social and the social the systematic. The lower value

is within the higher. The systemic is within the extrinsic and the extrinsic within the intrinsic.

The

more fully you are yourself, the better you will be at your job and in your social role, and in your

thinking. Out of your intrinsic being you summon the resources to be anything you want to be.

Thus,

the intrinsic, the development of your inner self, is not a luxury. It is a necessity for your own

being

yourself in all three dimensions. Suppose you are an accountant. You will be a better accountant

the

more you are intrinsically yourself. It is an amazing thing how mistakes are being made.

Mistakes

are being made when you are not summoning all your resources to the job at hand. On the other

hand, if you do, you will accomplish things you never dreamed of. You will make creative errors

-

“errors” which turn out to be just the thing you had to do - even though you did not know that at

the

time. Such creative errors are errors extrinsically and systemically but not intrinsically. Almost

all

great inventions and discoveries are results of such creative errors. This is called Serendipity -

the

capacity of reaching one‟s goal against one‟s intellectual knowledge - from a tale by Walpole,

The

Three Princes of Serendip, Serendip is the. old name of Ceylon. The three Princes always found

more than they were looking for - for they were on the right-road, and their unconscious worked

for

them unbeknown to themselves. For this reason also it is so stupid to always be busy. Some

people

think unless they do something nothing will be achieved. So they hustle and bustle, and actually

with

their busy-ness spoil things which should be left ripening by themselves - through one‟s letting.

go

and relaxing.

Thus, we must live on all three levels, sometimes more on one, sometimes more on the other, but

always enforcing the one by the other. The most difficult is to live on the level of our own

intrinsic

Self. We are born into a world that is technologically and socially organized. There is no

difficulty

in our systemic intellectual schooling and behavior and there is no difficulty in our social

schooling

and behavior; Our conscious effort must be made on that level. All the rest is easy, there are

schools

and organizations for it. But there are none for our inner Self. We have to make the effort to

become

our own self, ourselves. And since we are all in corporations and organizations we have to

combine,

to integrate our inner Selves with our job, with our intellectualism, with our social and

intellectual

being. As a guide for us to do this I have formulated the following four questions.

The first question is the intrinsic one. What am I here for in the world? In Mexico City I am a

consultant to a firm where executives are tested as to their capacities of leadership. When I ask

them

this question, “What are you here for in the world?” I get the most amazing answers. Usually,

they

are suddenly brought face to face with something they have never thought about before. What

should

they answer? You see, now we are right back where I was when I had to ask myself, “Who am I?

-

What am I here for in the world?” To be a good agent for Nationwide? Well, no dog would lick

you

for that. To make a lot of money? That is very unsatisfactory once you know what the nature of

the

world is. The universe is too big for money. Money is a very recent invention. There have been

times

when there was no money, and there will be times when there will be none. What will you do

with

money when you get to the Planet Mars? What is money worth in a cosmic society with space

ships

cruising regularly between Earth and Venus, Earth and Mars? Money is a fetish. It‟s nice to have

but

not so important that you have to be born for that.

What are you here for in the world? You are here for in the world to enrich the universe. That is

my

answer. I am here in order to give myself to the full, by using my body and mind for purpose: to

enrich the universe. My purpose was to find out what is goodness and to articulate as clearly as

possible the realm of value. This is my answer, not yours. You must find your own answer. And

the

answer will be the more true, the more fully you are yourself. For then you will come to the

conclusion that you represent a divine capital and that you were born to make this capital grow

and

bear fruit. You can only have this feeling if you feel your body and mind to be the servants, the

instruments, the organon, as the Greeks said, of your deepest inner Self. If, as we said, you are

transparent to your own Self. Transparent means like glass, you don‟t see it. Your body is

transparent

if it is an unseen, unfelt instrument for your purpose.

Last time I couldn‟t talk to you because I had a laryngitis. My throat obstructed my purpose. My

body was not transparent. I couldn‟t talk. If you had a stomach ache you couldn‟t be sitting there.

The body must not be felt, must be transparent to our purpose. This is called health. Our mind

must

be transparent, it must not obstruct us, as it does in rationalizations and illusions and plain

stupidity.

It must serve our purpose. This is called mental health. .We either can adapt our purpose to the

strength of our body and mind or our body and mind to our purpose. The higher we set our

purpose,

the greater we feel the enrichment to be we can offer the universe, the more we will have to

develop

our body and mind. . This greatness of purpose will make us great, but not better morally than

the

person who fully gives himself or herself to a limited purpose, as did Maria. It is the quality of

purpose that counts morally, not the quantity. Quality of purpose means complete dedication of

my

total Self to my task. It means using my body and mind for a purpose beyond my Self.

Transparency

leads to transcendence. I transcend myself. I become a symbol for a meaning beyond myself. A,

symbol is both transparent and transcendent. It is something that has a meaning outside of itself.

When I drew this symbol “City” you don‟t think of the curves and angles of these lines, you

think

of the meaning of it. You hardly see the letters. They don‟t obstruct but carry their meaning.

They

are transparent, and they are transcendent. If you don‟t know the meaning you only see lines and

curves and they mean nothing to you, like “zopog.” This is pronounced “gorod,” and means the

same

as “city.” Only it‟s Russian - foreign to you. So your body-and-mind must be more to you than

lines

and curves, they must be transparent and transcendent, a symbol for a meaning. Otherwise, your

name will be as foreign to you as Russian. You will be a foreigner to yourself, a stranger or, as

we

say, alienated to yourself. You must make the body meaningful, a symbol of a purpose in the

world.

You must have the feeling that you are put into this world for a purpose. You are not an accident,

your birth is important for the universe, you are put here by God. If you have that feeling you

have

intrinsic depth, if you don‟t have it, well, then,. you have to develop it.

Now, second is the extrinsic question: Why do I work with this organization? Here I am,

employed

by Nationwide, by the First National Bank of Manhattan, by the University, by whatever. Why

do

I work with this organization? It has to fit in with my purpose. If it doesn‟t I am either a fake or

unhappy or both. I cheat myself. I waste the divine capital I am. I sell myself to the world, for the

world, and in the world. And I will pay for it by neurosis, by drinking, even by smoking, which

is

slow and deliberate suicide - as if- I were saying: “I am not worth the gift of life.”

Once I have answered the second question satisfactorily I can proceed to the third: What can this

organization do to help me fulfill my meaning in the world? In other words, the organization I

work

with is here for me, it has to be an instrument for my divine mission. It has to be just like my

body

and my mind, a vehicle for myself within the universe. It is to me a small universe and a small

world,

a microcosm, and it has to nourish my inner self, give me confidence, give my spirit strength and

sustenance. Of course, many problems can arise here.

I once was in the following situation. I was hired as a professor at a University by a head of a

department who was a wonderful man. I had a wonderful time and had. all the suppqrt by the

organization I needed. Then, after some seven years, the head of the department who had hired

me

retired. And in came a stinker -a morally evil person - he drank, he was dissipated, he was a bad

human being. I was so sensitive to his evilness that I almost vomited whenever he came into the

room. I became as unhappy as can be. I couldn‟t go into my office without feeling disgusted. I

couldn‟t go to the campus without feeling depressed.. My teaching became bad. Not only that, I

became physically sick and I had an operation. They have made studies in hospitals, as you

probably

know, why people go to hospitals at that particular time, and over 90 percent of the time it was a

problem of an intrinsic nature which had nothing to do with the physical sickness. So finally I

said

to my wife, and she said to me, “You can‟t go on.” Now he couldn‟t get rid of me. I had tenure.

But

neither could I get rid of him. So finally, we decided we quit. I had no job at the time, but I got

one

soon after.

There are times when you have to be true to your own Self, and that‟s all there is to it. And come

hell

or high water you have to have faith that the world is really the structure that I have described to

you,

so that the badness of the moment will turn out well in the long run. Otherwise, you will curse

yourself to the end of your days and go down. It is so easy to destroy yourself. You have to have

a

feeling of your own integrity. Now, mine was an exceptionally bad situation. In the business

field

conditions are much more dynamic than in the academic field, and you can always hope to

outwit

or outlast such a situation. So, what can this organization do to help me fulfill my meaning in the

world? It must support and further me, and it must not obstruct me.

Usually, we think of the business organization we work with. But we are also members of larger

organizations, such as the state. How about when it turns evil? There are situations so powerfully

against you that you simply cannot overcome evil by good, but have to quit if you don‟t want to

be

a part of the evil - and thus you do overcome evil by good - by remaining true to your own Self.

It

happened to me in Germany. I had just finished my law exam when Hitler became Chancellor of

the

Reich. For one week I walked through the woods of Berlin and asked myself, “Who is crazy?

Are

you crazy or 60,000, 00 Germans? Is everything that you have written wrong? Is my whole

thinking

wrong? Or is it right? If I am right the whole of Germany is wrong, they are mentally sick. In

that

case, there is no choice for me but to leave everything, my family and all I have and to get out of

Germany.” My family is a mixed family - Jewish, Catholic, Protestant - all of them except my

brother stayed in Germany. But I had to go because I saw I couldn‟t bust this evil, this Hitler.

Should

I make my peace? Should I become a traitor to myself? Now this is a situation that can happen to

all

of us any time. People at this moment are emigrating from Argentina. People are leaving China.

And

you all know of the Berlin Wall - people want to leave East Germany. All‟these are evil

organizations which some people cannot tolerate any more. There are even some people who are

emigrating from the United States because they feel the country has turned toward evil and they

want

no part of a nuclear war. Imagine what tortures of conscience, what clarity of vision, what

determination are necessary for such a course. And so with any case of quitting, or overcoming

an

evil in an organization to which one belongs.

Once I have answered the third question to my satisfaction and have found that the organization

is

the right environment for me which nourishes my inner Self and encourages me to my own self-

development, I can proceed to the fourth question: How can I help this organization to help me

fulfill

my meaning in the world? This means that I with all my powers and good will reciprocate the

good

will of the organization towards me. That I am not like one of those workers in a shop who “only

work there,” and do the minimum with which they can get away, and hold back 40 percent of

their

powers, thus hurting themselves, their inner selves, much more than the organization they work

for.

That I fulfill my own self by fulfilling my duty, and more than my duty, toward the organization.

That the organization becomes the creative instrument of my own self-fulfillment. There is no

happier relationship in all the world than such a relationship toward and with an organization in

which one works - and if the wives complain saying that you are married more to your work than

to

them they really mean it as the highest accolade both to you and your organization. My wife

often

says she wished she were a class - for there I really give myself and am truly myself.

If I can answer all four questions to my satisfaction, I have integrated my life, my job, my

intellectual

interests all into one, and I am a harmonious human being in the right spot. My world is

complete.

And, of course, no executive can do his job as an executive unless he answers, to his own

satisfaction, these four questions.

Moral Types

I think it is clear by now that we are living in three worlds. We live in the world of the mind, we

live

in the world of the senses, and we live in the world of our inner selves.

We live in the world of the mind. It is in our mind we think, we build systems. Here are all the

sciences, all mathematics, astronomy, cosmogony, physics, biology - here is the arsenal of our

technological world. And there are people who live in the systemic world of the mind as their

real

world - the scientists. They live in the world of systemic value. Sometimes, in their delight over

the

systemic beauty of this world, they forget the world of everyday reality and of intrinsic values.

They

appear then in a spectrum of types from quiet absent-minded professors to noisy proponents of

bigger and better bombs.

Secondly, we live in the world of the senses. This is the world of space and time, our social

world.

Here we, are with our colleagues, in our professions, our business, in the world we know.

Ninety-five

percent of the people in the developed countries, both in the West and in the East, both in

capitalist

and in communist countries, live in this world, the world of extrinsic value. The vast majority f

them

believe this is the only world there is, and they neglect their inner being, as does Tolstoy‟s Ivan

Ilych

in the old Russia, or the heroes of Vladimir Dudintsev‟s Not By Bread Alone in the new Russia -

where man does not live by bread alone either - or as do we in the technological society of the

West.

But outside the capitalist-communist block of developed countries, there is the vast mass of

humanity living by no means in the world of extrinsic value, of social classes and functions.

They

live either in a primitive world of strict ritual - systemic values - or in the world of their inner

selves -

intrinsic value; and the encroaching Western world throws them into turmoil, as did the first

missionaries the innocent savages of the South Pacific (as in Somerset Maugham‟s Miss

Thompson)

and as does the Western way of life today many of the people in other continents. The so-called

“under-developed” peoples are underdeveloped only on the level of extrinsic value; on that of

intrinsic value we are at least as underdeveloped as they, and often more. We need a spiritual

Point

4 Program in reverse.

Thirdly, each of us lives in his own depth, up to a certain point. None of us lives all the way

down

to the bottom of the cone of our Self - in eternity. If we did we would be Saints. But we do not

even

live as deeply as we could and ought to.

Now, the peculiar thing is that not even in the field of the mind do we live as fully as we could

and

ought to. We are experts only at social living - and that is only one world among three. Thus we

really live a very limited life. The full human being would be the one who knew all of science,

had

all the experiences of society, and lived in the fullness of his inner depth. This perfect -human

being

doesn‟t yet exist. We are still on a low stage of evolution. Compared to man in a billion years - if

there is man in a billion years - we are like monkeys. Man in a billion years will be that full

human

being. Systemically, he will know everything that Einstein knew, and more. You and I and most

people know practically nothing of physics. We know nothing of relativity or quantum theory.

We

are scientific morons - systemic morons. Yet we live in this world that is the way the scientists

say

and prove it is - and yet we know nothing about it. Of a huge part of this great world of ours, we

are

ignorant - we haven‟t learned it. That man of the future - he will know - he will just have this

knowledge.

There is already one such type in existence, the French peasant boy Jean Fréne, who was drafted

into

the army and on testing was shown to have such tremendous inborn capacity for physical science

that

now he works with one of France‟s great physicists. One of his teachers in nuclear physics at

Lyons

said of him: “Fréne has the most remarkable mind I have encountered. It leaps from mountain

peak

to mountain peak, while the rest of us have to think our way laboriously down the side of one

mountain, across the valley and up the slopes to the final conclusion. When we get there we find

Jean

Fréne has been there waiting for us for some time.” The knowledge of this boy grows out of his

deep

intrinsic self and complete self-sufficiency. He is still a peasant “so comfortable with himself and

with the world into which he was born that he may never be moved to employ fully his great

gifts.

But if he does use them, we may see another Einstein,” as somebody else put it (in The Readers‟

Digest, October 1962). This man lives so fully within himself that he did not even know he had

this

intelligence of genius until he was tested. Most of us live so fully in the social world that we

don‟t

know the spiritual gifts we have - until we are tested, as in the crises of our lives. In the social

world

of extrinsic value we are experts. We are pretty adept at it. We are social animals - we are smart,

that

is, we have social intelligence. What we call a moron is really a guy who doesn‟t know how to

get

along in society - but he is a moron only in this extrinsic sense. He is a moron in certain respects,

he

is dumb in certain respects which we know. But in other respects he might be better than you and

I - as was our Maria. He is a social moron, and we are just as much scientific and spiritual

morons.

Thus, in the social field we are very adept. But we fall far short of living in the full depth of

ourselves. We live more or less fully horizontally, but not vertically. We live rather shallow

lives.

We are not fulfilling ourselves. We are only living a small fragment of ourselves. We are not

really.

We don‟t live what we could be. And that is as moronic in the moral field as not knowing what

could

be known about the universe is in the scientific field, or not knowing what society is about in the

social field. In other words, of the full spectrum of man which is this here

we don‟t live more. than a fragment. We look, maybe, like this

like plates rather than like infinite cones, like tops rather than like universes. And as children

whip

around their tops, so circumstances whip us round - till our heads spin. Only if we summon the

resources that are within us do we summon the whole spectrum of what man could be. We

develop

ourselves intellectually more and more and we develop ourselves morally more and more. And

that

is the task that the future has for man, and.each of us has for himself. Great men such as

Leonardo

da Vinci, St. Thomas of Aquinas, or Goethe are prototypes which we could, if we wanted to,

emulate.

The most important development is in the depth dimension. I told you about that new chairman

of

my department whom I couldn‟t stomach. What was wrong with him, from my point of view?

The

only thing that was wrong with him was that he had a different moral pattern from me; he was a

different moral type. Suppose you live all in depth - there are people who do this -and there‟s

another

guy who lives all on the surface. He‟s a social being, a great backslapper, with lots of columns in

Who‟s Who. He is a member of a hundred clubs, he is a great extrovert, and you are a great

introvert.

You are here and he‟s there:

[Hartman here gives two cones, like those above, with one colored to a greater depth than the

other.]

You have very little in common. He speaks with great force about what you regard as trifles.

Every

word he says hits you in the stomach. And you just sit there, a quiet reproach to him. You can‟t

stand

him and he can‟t stand you. For him you are the bore of bores, and slightly dullwitted. Because

you‟re just sitting there looking at your navel - say you are sitting beside each other on the plane.

The

more attempts he makes to draw you out, the more you draw back into yourself. “Boy,” he will

say,

“What a bore I have been flying with.” And you will say, “What a pompous fool, what a

chatterbox.”

In the few hours of the flight a sound antipathy has grown up between you. Now imagine you

have

to sit beside him day in and day out, in meetings and all kinds of occasions - you have to sit

through

life with him. The situation just becomes intolerable. On the other r hand, imagine two like him

meet

on the plane or in life. No matter how different in their interests they may be, they are both social

beings. One, suppose, is a banker, the other a professor. Well, they get a drink together, they talk

all

the way about all kinds of things. But if two like you meet on the plane nothing happens at all.

And

if you meet in life it will take a long time to warm up and to discover each other.

Thus, there are moral types, and the differences and similarities between them are more

important

than any other kind of differences and similarities. Thus, it is absolutely, mathematically, certain

that

there must be people in this world that you can‟t stand and that can‟t stand you - a discovery

young

people make to their consternation. It is in the intrinsicness of our being, our spiritual Gestalt, the

different form or pattern of our character, the very inner psyche, where the deepest differences

are

between us.

Now, in order to test yourself as to where you stand in this inner pattern, let us make a self-test.

This

test can also serve for your moral judgment of others. It will contain the set of moral properties

of

the Self.

A Self -Test

If you live in the depth of yourself you are a world for yourself and you need nothing else. Not

only

that, you are anchored with the totality of your own being in the totality of the world. You feel at

home in the world. The world is your home - you feel at ease. And the strange thing is,

everything

comes to you even without any specific effort - everything is added unto you, as it says in the

Bible.

You have the great property of Faith. Faith is the complete repose in the world as a whole, You

are

living in this world as if lying in a comfortable bed. You. are, as we say, well born. You feel

wonderful to be alive. Faith is exactly this - to feel good in the world and to feel that the world is

good. You are not only made in the image of God and you bear intrinsically His name - “I am I”

-

you also see the world with the eyes of God: “And God saw everything that He had made and,

behold, it was very good.” (Gen. 1:31) You are not letting God down by feeling the world is

rotten.

You have the deep trust, fides - the Latin word from which derives “Faith” - that God is good

and

that the world is His creation; and you have the humility, as did Job, to trust in the goodness of

God

and the world even though at times you are unable to understand either the one or the other.

Intrinsic Faith is the fundamental property of the morally good man. From this property derive

all

the others; and Intrinsic Humility is the first derivative property,

On the other hand, there is the unfortunate fellow who is not well born, who has not found

himself,

who has not anchored himself deeply within the world as a whole. That poor fellow is ill-at-ease

in

the world. He feels that his birth was an accident, that he is an error of the universe. He really

should

not have been born, he thinks. He does not like himself, he wishes he were not. He lives in spite

of

himself - and in spite of everything. He is defiant - intrinsically at odds with himself, with the

whole

world - and with God. God to him is not a beloved and trusted Father. He is a fearful and

mistrusted

master - as believes the unfaithful servant in the Parable of the Talents. This man lacks faith. His

whole life is one great suspicion or fear. He is thrown into the world like dropped by accident

from

a plane over a strange country. He does not know where he is and what he is up to. He is

intrinsically

bewildered - and hence afraid. Intrinsic Fear is the fundamental property of the morally insecure

person. And Intrinsic Defiance, Spitefulness, is his first derivative property.

There are then two great fundamental properties that characterize two fundamentally different

kinds

of people, the morally secure and the morally insecure, the strong Selves and the wobbly Selves,

the

wide awake and the sleepy - as St. Paul called them - the aware ones and the wary ones. The man

of faith is aware, wide awake to „ everything the world offers him. The world is right, and God is

in

His Heaven watching it. The man of fear is wary, he has not faith, either in God or the world. He

has

heard of it but he cannot make himself believe it. He is world-wary, always on the lookout; he

sees

all the bad things in life, all the suffering, and he says, “How is God possible with all this misery

around. It would be blasphemy to believe in a God who created this world.” He is a cosmic

pessimist. And the man of faith is a cosmic optimist. There are many bad things in the world, but

they are flaws of the design, or the execution. of the world, but they are not its essence. They

belong

to the realm of contingency, and this realm is. a small part - a statistically calculable small part -

of

the grand design. The pessimist does not see the whole for the parts, and thus, as the American

philosopher Pierce has said, is a little crazy.

Now, let us look at the derivative properties of Faith and Fear.

Defiance, Spitefulness, mean Superiority and Pride. The man of intrinsic fear and suspicion

cannot

trust the world, he can only trust himself. All he has is himself, his own power. He has to be the

one

who commands for otherwise everything would go awry. He has and needs a feeling of

superiority

and indispensability for he is the only one who can make order in the universal chaos. In

business

he is the one around whom everything has to circle. He has to keep a tight reign. He cannot

delegate

authority. If he did everything would go wrong; the world itself would fall apart. He is the one

who

keeps it together, precariously, by its seams. He is the boss of creation. God was just lucky that

he

came around. In politics, this is the megalomaniac, like Hitler with his anti-Jewish Messiah

complex,

Castro with his Jesus beard. I saw pictures of him in Cuba comparing him to Christ. Or Kwame

Nkrumah, the Osagyefo or Redeemer of Ghana, of all Africa,, if not the world. In business, as in

politics, we still take thesetypes seriously rather than regarding them as. crazy - although Sewell

Avery, the late boss of Montgomery Ward, was regarded as slightly touched when he had to be

carried out of his office by soldiers of the Federal Government. Defiance is a vice that can grow

to

monstrous proportions. The British caricaturist, Low, once had a cartoon of Hitler, standing in

the

palm of God, stretched down from the sky, and shouting, with his fist raised up against God:

“You

may have begun man, but I am going to finish him.” He defied God, threatening massive

retaliation

against creation itself. What Lucifer, what the Devil, what Mephistopholes, what the Antichrist

has

not been able to do, that he, Hitler attempted to do. He failed, as did his predecessors. The deed

may

finally be achieved by the gentle aristocrats and the well-intentioned peasants of the Anglo-

Saxon

and Russian governments. They start where Hitler left off. They prepare to do the ultimate deed

of

the Devil in the name of duty. Defiance with them has taken the form of national supremacy -

Sovereignty.

The man of faith does not need defiance; he is cradled within the universe as a child in the arms

of

his mother. He trusts God as does the child. He has intrinsic Humility. He is the “poor in spirit,

“the

ptochos to pneumati - “he who bends humbly to the spirit,” as is the literal meaning of the

phrase,

the humble-minded, as in the translation of J. B. Phillips, the best translator of the New

Testament -

whose will be the Kingdom of Heaven. He is the meek -the gentle, as is the literal translation -

who

shall inherit the earth. He is the pure in heart who will see God. His humility is intrinsic or

cosmic

humility. He does not bend his back to any man but to the spirit, “to pneumati;” he is humble in

spirit

toward God, and gentle toward man. He has Serenity - and this is the second derivative property

of

the morally secure man - serenity of spirit. This means a deep joy at being alive and around. A

serene

person makes everyone around him feel good. Nothing touches him who is serene. He is

spiritually

happy. The original meaning of the Latin serenus is clear, bright or unclouded, like a serene sky.

He

is transparent within himself.

The fearful fellow, on the other hand, since upon his activity depends everything, is Aggressive

and

Combative. Aggressiveness, Combativeness is the second derived property from Fear. He is

intrinsically on the defense, both aggressive and Defensive. He is, and that is the third property,

Competitive, whereas the faithful man is Cooperative. To him, his fellow is a helper in a

cooperative

world. Everyone is a friend. For the competitive, everyone is a potential enemy, who has to be

overcome.

The faithful man is Expansive. His spirit is as large as the whole world and it takes in everyone:

“This kiss to all the world,” as Beethoven sings at the end of the Ninth Symphony. He is

continuously in love with the world and with everything in it. As God has His arms around him,

so

he has his arms around everyone and everything. The fearful man, by contrast, is Restrictive. He

is

like the fellow in Steig‟s organ box who is cowering in that box and gasping, “People are no

damn

good.” He is narrow. He wants to shrink the world, whereas the faithful man wants to expand it.

He

wants to shrink himself, he wants to be nothing in order not to be touched by anything. The

faithful

man, on the other hand, wants to open up his soul wide to take in every experience. The spirit of

creation moves in him, and the spirit of destruction in the other. The faithful man, since he is

expansive, is Humane. He,will never say a bad word about anyone, no matter who. The fearful

man

is a Cynic, he will tear down everyone and everything. The word “cynic” comes from the Greek

word

“kyon” or “dog.” The fearful man feels himself to be a dog and makes a dog out of everyone -

although I don‟t want to offend dogs. The cynic. sees everything and everyone as evil, whereas

the

humane gives everyone the benefit of the doubt. He always builds up the other, he always finds

something good in everyone. He sees the human in everything.

The faithful man, since he sees the best in everything and everyone, is Magnanimous. He has a

great

soul. The fearful man is Sanctimonious; he pretends at greatness of soul, but his praise is tinged

with

superiority. He is condescending, talking down to everyone, even when he praises. The magnani-

mous man praises with a full heart, every praise is a praise of God‟s creation and thus of himself.

For

the sanctimonious, in his cosmic fear, every building up of the other means a tearing down of

himself. Thus, when he praises he has to do so with condescension so that his own merit will not

be

obscured. He praises rarely since few things or people appear to him praiseworthy. He has the

Holier-than-thou attitude of the dogmatic and the fanatic.

Cynicism and sanctimoniousness are properties of restrictiveness and narrowness of soul, just as

humaneness and magnanimity are properties of expansiveness of soul. Another property born

from

restrictiveness is Greed, which is the seventh derivative property of fear. The fearful man must

be

greedy because unless he takes his, somebody else will take it from him. The faithful man, on the

other hand, is Generous. He can afford to give because he knows that when he throws his bread

on

the water it will come back to him manifold. Money, and indeed all material goods, mean little to

him; yet, he values them in their place and is not prodigal or wasteful. He respects the economy

of

the world.

The fearful man is Vain. Vanity is a property that is bound to restrictiveness and to superiority.

On

the one hand, this man has to improve on creation, including his own appearance, and thus has to

squeeze himself into things and tie himself down to forms which his nature may dislike. On the

other

hand, he uses his handsomeness in order to be effective and beat others who are not similarly

endowed. Thus he builds up his self. He looks at himself in the mirror and his finery makes him

feel

good. The faithful man, on the other hand, is Unpretentious. He may be a little sloppy, but he

will

never be dirty. He follows nature in his outer appearance and does not force nature to follow it.

Vanity is the outward appearance, it is the ornament of pride. The humble man who is gentle and

natural cannot be vain.

Another property of restrictiveness and the desire to shrink is that the fearful person is Easily

Hurt,

he is Touchy. This at bottom makes him a Coward. He is born cowardly toward the world. He

was

born in spite of himself; he is not fully born and thus he is scarred in his spirit, and scared. He is,

as

we say, Thin-skinned. He is born, so to speak, without a skin against the world. I mean a spiritual

skin, not a sensory skin. He is not overly sensitive in general but only where he is himself

concerned.

He is, you might say, cosmically spoiled. He thinks the world owes him a living and, more

importantly, owes him loving. He is love-starved. Since, so to speak, he did the world a favor in

being born, much against his will, the world ought to reciprocate and pamper him. Thus anything

that goes against him is exaggerated because it is so unjust, and anything that goes for him he

takes

for granted. He is a spiritual cry-baby, and it is this that makes him a coward. He will not

venture,

in either thought, feeling, or action beyond certain limits. Few things appear to him possible. He

is

a man of the present, a conservative, trying to conserve what he has rather than risking it in great

enterprise - like the unfaithful servant in the “Parable of the Talents.” The man of faith is the

very

opposite. He is a man of Boldness and Courage. Nothing appears to him impossible, every

problem

resolvable, every deed achievable, every difficulty superable. And indeed, obstacles melt under

his

onslaught as do hills under a powerful car. He takes everything in stride, never getting overly

agitated either in failure or in success. He is well-balanced, poised, the man of Equanimity. He is

Not-Easily-Hurt. He never expects anything from the world but takes whatever he receives as

grace,

as a gift from the bounty of God‟s goodness, for which he is grateful. The man of fear never is

grateful. He is always afraid that something might go wrong. Therefore he must always be sure it

does not; and instead of being grateful for good fortune he is Resentful in case of bad fortune. He

is unforgiving, vindictive; in his thirst for Vengeance he will not rest until he has wrought his

revenge. Since he is the navel of the universe, anything done against him is done against the

world

itself; and it is up to him to righten this cosmic evil. The most tremendous example of this kind

of

vengefulness was Hitler, who had films made of the death of the rebels of the 20th of July, 1944.

In

his study, he reveled at their death agonies as they were strung up on piano wires. The faithful

man,

with his great heart is Forgiving. He knows that vengeance is the Lord‟s. He pities rather than

hates

the malefactor.

The fearful man, since he was born by accident, thrown into a bad and hostile world, has what I

call

the Heavy Touch. Everything is very, very difficult for him. He has to work so hard, harder than

anyone else, and nothing comes of it. Hitler always said he worked day and night for the German

people and they did not thank him. The faithful man, on the other hand, has the Light Touch. He

bounces through life, as Kierkegaard says, having within him the powers of infinity. He plays on

the

instrument of the world like a virtuoso on his piano, seemingly without effort; yet behind this

light-

handed and light-footed performance is his effort of acquiring the power of eternity.

The fearful man with his heavy touch always takes the longest road. He is Complicated. He,

regards

complication as a virtue and a sign of profundity. The faithful man is Uncomplicated; he has an

innocence of spirit and purity of heart that sees through the chaos of a situation to its very core.

Such

persons are Billy Budd in Melville‟ s novel; St. Bernadette in the novel of Franz Werf el, who

winds

all the great theologians around her little finger; and such persons are the true scientists, the men

of

genius who see the simple solution of complicated; the true scientist knows it is false and that he

has

to continue the search. Only that which is not intellectually controlled is complicated; and the

fearful

man, as he is deficient in spirit, is also deficient in mind. He lacks Common Sense, which the

faithful

man has; the capacity of seeing things as they are and not as he would like them to be. Thus, the

true

scientists must be a man who is well born. If he is not he may erect very complicated systems,

but

they do not have essential truth within them. There is a famous passage in Bertrand Russell‟s

book,

My Philosophical Development, where he tells of his discovery of the logical principles of

mathe-

matics and establishes what he calls “logical common sense. “ This passage is worth quoting.

“While I was looking for a solution, it seemed to me that there were three requisites if the

solution was to be wholly satisfying. The first of these, which was absolutely imperative, was

that the contradictions should disappear. The second, which was highly desirable, though not

logically compulsive, was that the solution should leave intact as much of mathematics as

possible. The third, which is difficult to state precisely, was that the solution should, on

reflection, appeal to what may be called „logical common sense‟ - i. e. that it should seem,

in the end, just what one ought to have expected all along. Of these three conditions, the first

is of course universally acknowledged. The second, however, is rejected by a large school

which holds that great portions of analysis are not valid as they stand. The third condition is

not regarded as essential by those who are content with logical dexterity. Professor Quine,

for example, has produced systems which I admire greatly on account of their skill, but

which I cannot feel to be satisfactory because they seem to be created ad hoc and not to be

such as even the cleverest logician would have thought of if he had not known of the

contradictions. On this subject, however, an immense and very abstruse literature has grown

up, and I will say no more about its finer points.

As is seen, Russell opposes logical dexterity to logical common sense, cleverness and

abstruseness

to naturalness. The true scientist, by his correct reasoning, stumbles upon problems and

contradictions which then the dexterous and merely skillful scientist uses to produce ad hoc

solutions. The latter knows all the answers but he does not understand the question. He is a

second-

hand or derived scientist whereas the true one is first-hand and original. He may not be as clever

as

the other, but he is more relevant.

This leads to the next property. The faithful man, primarily, sees the Relevant, the fearful man,

primarily, the Irrelevant. The fearful man, since he has little direction, takes everything for

equally

important. He thus confuses the important with the unimportant, giving importance to the

unimportant and no importance to the important. The faithful man, being grounded in the essence

of the world, sees the important as important and the unimportant as unimportant. He takes the

important seriously and values it accordingly, and takes the unimportant not seriously and

disvalues

it accordingly. He has, in a word, a Sense of Proportions, which the fearful man lacks. The latter

exaggerates trifles and dismisses weighty matters with a wave of his hand. Thus, Edward Teller,

the

master gadgeteer of the hydrogen bomb, dismisses the whole of civilization. He says in his book

The

Legacy of Hiroshima:

“Our gross national product ... now is more than 500 billion dollars a year. But the total

value

of everything that exists in this country - all the houses, clothes, food, factories, minerals,

farms, services, cars, everything that can be bought or sold - is only about 1,500 billion

dollars. Everything we have, in other words, could be produced by our present industrial

complex in only about three years ...

“This also means that survivors of an all-out nuclear attack, given food and the bare

minimum of essential tools, could rebuild our industrial complex ... to its pre-attack capacity

within five years.

What Dr. Teller does not see here is the millenia it took to build up a technological society that

can

produce 500 billion dollars worth of goods and services in one year. He exemplifies what Ortega

y

Gasset, in his book The Rebellion of the Masses, calls the specialist barbarian, who because he is

adept at one phase of civilization believes he is adept at all. He is the “mass man” who

unwittingly

lives in the society of the 20th Century as a savage does in the jungle; taking it all for granted.

“The

mass man,” says Ortega, “believes that the civilization into which he was born and which he

makes

use of, is as spontaneous and self-producing as nature, and ipso facto he is changed into the

primitive. Civilization, for him, is the primeval forest... The principles on which the civilized

world...is based simply do not exist for him.” Thus it makes no difference to Teller whether a

society

is at the height of its development or in the primeval - and worse - conditions after a nuclear

attack.

This slaughtered and poisoned “society,” he believes, will produce its hundreds of billions of

goods

right off the bat. One is reminded of Jefferson‟s saying, in his „ Notes on Virginia (Query XXII)

that

“never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject as that which has been employed

to

persuade nations... to go to war.” Or, as another nuclear scientist, Ralph E. Lapp, in his book,

Kill

and Overkill says, in commentary on Teller and his friends:

“One can only admire the elegant simplicity of the gentlemen‟s arithmetic. On Dr. Teller‟s

reasoning, with just the know-how and a few essential tools, ancient Greece might have leaped

into the twentieth century in five years, - or China or darkest Africa might today. His glib

analysis disregards what it would take to rebuild the complex fabric of an industrial society -

an economy in which an electronic gadget produced in a Hoboken plant is made up of a steel

chassis fabricated in Chicago, plastic parts from California, gears from New Hampshire, relays

from North Carolina, and special transistors from Texas. It has taken a series of five-year plans

for the Soviet Union, with its wealth of manpower and raw materials, to build an industrial

capacity which does not begin to app rioach that of the United States. It took Europe a decade,

with considerable help from the United States, to get rolling again after the comparatively

minor

damage of World War II. A nuclear war would not only tear to pieces the organization of our

economy but also destroy much of its foundation - including the means of harnessing sources

of energy, without which the most sophisticated technology is powerless to rebuild.”

Teller is an extreme but unfortunately not rare example of the fearful man not seeing the relevant

for

the irrelevant, the whole for the part, the forest for the trees. We shall later find other examples

of

this kind of pseudo-arithmetic. It mixes up, with a show or erudition, the important and the

unimportant, mind and matter, spirit and ideology, and its systems, ingenious though they may

be,

are yet distortions of reality.

This means that the fearful man is at bottom Irrational. His defective self interferes with the

clarity

of his vision. He uses systems in order to bolster himself. The faithful man, on the other hand, is

Rational. He uses reason in conformance with the structure of the world itself. Therefore, true

science, although nothing but a construction of the human mind, can yet account for what is

going

on in the world.

The fearful man is Systemic. He uses systems as a crutch and is lost without them - as was

Eichman.

He is Rigid. The faithful man, on the other hand, is Spontaneous and Flexible. He plays upon and

with systems as a virtuoso with and upon his instrument. He is sovereign above systems; the

system

is not sovereign over him. For the fearful man, since he is always more or less at odds with the

world, things never quite turn out the way he wants. He will never make the creative errors of

serendipity but will make uncreative errors which work against him. Thus he will become

Impatient,

another property of the fearful man. The faithful man, on the other hand, since he knows that he

is

in the current of things, will have infinite Patience. He knows that in the long run things will

work

out the way he wants. He can afford to wait. The fearful fellow has to be impatient for he thinks

everything depends on him and every counter-stroke against him is due to his failure to keep on

guard. Therefore, a further derivative property of fear is Frantic Activity, bustling busyness. The

man

of faith is relaxed, his dynamics is quiet like that of a noiseless Cadillac and therefore much

stronger

than that of the bustling busybody who sputters like a scooter and takes extrinsic activity for

intrinsic

dynamics. The activity of the fearful man is like that of a child squirting water pistols; the

dynamics

of the man of faith is like one of the underwater currents that change the climate of continents.

Since the man of faith is in tune with the universe he has dogged Persistence and Perseverance.

He

feels within himself the strength of the universe. He never stops for a moment on his way but he

is

never obtrusive. He is a still water that runs deep. The fearful man, on the other hand, although

he

may seem persistent has yet an intrinsic Inconstancy within him, a profound Hesitation about his

work. Since he does not have enough faith and has not enough strength for the whole universe,

he

only goes up to a certain point and then stops, looking for another direction. He is, and that is a

further property of his, Short-sighted, Myopic. Since he lacks complete awareness, he has a

certain

Dullness of vision, and of feeling, a coldness of heart which, coupled with his trifling acuteness

and

fastidiousness, his attention to detail without seeing the great line, makes him a deadly bore. The

faithful man, on the other hand, has complete awareness, wide Vision, warmth and wisdom.

Since

the fearful man is the hub of his universe, yet lacks vision, he must exaggerate the small and

denigrate the big. His dullness, coldness, and fastidiousness are consequences of the irrelevancy

of

his activities.

This leads to the final and most important difference between moral types. The fearful man,

since

he lacks a sense of proportion, is Indifferent towards what really counts, especially toward the

infinite gr eatness of the human being. Since he is weak inside and hates to be touched by

anything

unpleasant, he is indifferent against suffering. The deepest trait of the man of faith, on the other

hand, is Compassion. He suffers with the sufferer. Every suffering is his own suffering. He

manifests

within himself the intrinsic oneness of all creation. Compassion, as we said, is the touchstone of

morality.

These then are the twenty properties derived from the fundamental properties of Intrinsic Fear

and

Intrinsic Faith. The following is the list of these properties.

INTRINSIC FAITH

Trust in the World, Being Well Born

1. Humility

2. Serenity

3. Cooperation

4. Expansiveness

5. Humaneness

6. Magnanimity

7. Generosity

8. Unpretentiousness

9. Not Easily Hurt, Equanimity

10. Boldness, Courage

11. Forgivingness

12. Light Touch

13. Uncomplicated, Purity, Innocence, Com-

mon Sense

14. Relevance, Sense of Proportion

15. Rationality

16. Spontaneity, Flexibility

17. Relaxed Dynamic

18. Perseverance, Patience

19. Awareness, Vision, Warmth, Wisdom

20. Compassion

INTRINSIC FEAR

Suspicion, Insecurity, World Wariness

1. Defiance, Spitefulness, Superiority

2. Aggressiveness, Defensiveness,

Combativeness

3. Competitiveness

4. Restrictiveness, Narrowness

5. Cynicism

6. Sanctimoniousness, Holier-than-thou Atti-

tude

7. Greed

8. Vanity

9. Easily Hurt, Touchiness

10. Cowardice

11. Vengefulness

12. Heavy Touch

13. Complicated, Lack of Common Sense

14. Irrelevance, No Sense of Proportion

15. Irrationality

16. Systemicness, Rigidity

17. Tense, or Frantic, Busyness

18. Inconstancy, Hesitation, Impatience

19.Non-awareness, Myopia, Dull-ness,

Coldness, Trifling Acuteness, Fastidiousness

20. Indifference

This list will help us to judge ourselves and others. In the degree that we have developed our Self

we will have the properties on the left side. In the degree that we have not.we will have those on

the

right. None of us, of course, has all the properties on either the one or the other side. We are all

mixtures of the two.

Now let us take a few examples to test this list. In the book by Emmett John Hughes,

Eisenhower:

A Political Memoir, the former presidential assistant opposes Eisenhower and Dulles. He writes

as

follows:

“No anomaly of all the Eisenhower years would prove so remarkable in nature and so

historic

in consequence as the improbable flourishing of the comradeship of this President and this

Secretary of State. For their differences in temper and outlook attained an almost

unblemished study in contrasts. Where the one was expansive, the other was suspicious;

where the one was occasionally vague, the other was fastidiously precise; where the one

valued the thrust of “instinct, “. the other lived by the rigor of logic; where the one might risk

credulity, the other might risk cynicism. Nervously sensitive to this great gap between

himself and the President - and occasionally confessing privately his fear of the President‟s

„naivete‟ - Dulles practiced through the years, a, relentless vigilance over all officials,

American or foreign, who sought direct access to the President.

“As Secretary of State, Dulles conceived his task to be the fulfilling of two roles - both

equally inconceivable for an Eisenhower. He would be a lawyer and he would be a

theologian. As a lawyer, he viewed himself as charged with the most historic litigation of the

twentieth century -the indictment and punishment of the Soviet Union for its crimes against

freedom. In the same legalistic spirit, he tended to view the President rather as a client too

malleable for his own best interest, requiring the shield of stern professional counsel. From

this followed logically the fiercely proprietary spirit with which Dulles viewed all American

foreign policy; essentially, it was his case - to argue, lose, or win. And it was in his arguing

of this „case‟ before the world at large that the Secretary felt compelled to become a

theologian, as well. By - the terms of his moralistic orthodoxy, the promise of political

salvation lay in a kind of excommunication of Soviet power. The contaminating stigma of

sin therefore attached to all acts of normal diplomacy that, by direct touching the unclean

enemy, gave countenance to his damning offenses. And so any such diplomacy came to

appear as evil and unthinkable as selling indulgences.”

Here we have in Dulles a great number of the properties of the man of intrinsic fear and in

Eisenhower those of intrinsic faith. Suspiciousness against expansiveness, rigidity against

spontaneousness, cynicism against credulity - which is an exaggeration of humaneness - naivete

against complicatedness, and the sanctimoniousness of the inquisitor, the holier-than-thou

attitude

of the fanatic. In other reports on Dulles we find other properties of the morally insecure man.

Thus,

in a review on the biography John Foster Dulles: A Reappraisal, by Richard Goold-Adams, in

The

New Republic of December 1, 1962, Louis J. Halle writes about Dulles:

“Mr. Dulles was without personal charm. The corner of his mouth turned down by nature

almost to the vertical, so that when he had to meet a latter-day requirement of our political

life, that of laughing for the press-cameras, the effect was rather ghastly. He could do it with

only half his mouth. His seriousness was absolute, for he belonged to that special type of

humanity whom I shall call the single-minded concentrators, In the narrowness of his

attention to only one objective at a time... he betrayed allies, for instance, because he was not

looking their way at the moment.

“If the first impression of Mr. Dulles was that he was built of granite, a later impression

equated him with the King in Hamlet. Mr. Dulles gave the same impression of uneasiness

and suffering. One felt unhappiness in him, and he had a constant nervous twitch on one side

of his face which suggested that he was not at ease inside.”

Dulles, in a word, was not well born. Yet, he lived a life pretending that he was. His inner

uneasiness, Halle explains, was due to the fact that Dulles did not live himself but a myth he had

created. He was a “living lie.

“It was the tension he was constantly under to live up to the myth of himself that he had

spent his life creating. Hamlet‟s uncle, had realized his ambition to be king by foul means,

while Mr. Dulles had realized his ambition to be Secretary of State by creating the Dulles

myth. In this sense, both were living a lie (as all of us live lies, although on a less heroic

scale). According to the myth, he had been born to be Secretary of State as Hercules had been

born to amaze the world with feats of strength, and no one else could equal the experience

and the knowledge of international affairs that were his from the beginning.

“The reality, however, was different. Before he became Secretary he had been

intermittently

involved in specialized international negotiations at which he had showed his notable skill

as lawyer and concentrator alike; but he had nothing like the broad experience which Dean

Acheson before him, and Dean Rusk since, brought to the office. When.‟ as the new

Secretary, he first addressed the Foreign Service Of the United States at a private luncheon,

undertaking an Achesonian tour d‟horizon before what was perhaps‟the most knowledgeable

body of men in the world, he betrayed points of ignorance that came as a shock to those who

had assumed the validity of the myth.

“Is there any moral strain greater than that of having constantly to live up to requirements

that are beyond one‟s capacity, whether the requirements of a job or the requirements of a

legend? This surely explains why Mr. Dulles could not be at ease in the presence of

knowledgeable subordinates.

“One part-of the myth that he was at particular pains to cultivate was the image of the

strong

man, and this always threatened to betray him as the N apoleonic myth had repeatedly

betrayed Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. Before his first year as Secretary was well over he had

thrice struck strong-man attitudes which he would be forced to abandon: he had proclaimed

„liberation‟ instead of „containment:‟ he had threatened France with an „agonizing

reappraisal‟ of American policy toward Europe if she did not join the European Defense

Community; and he had threatened „massive retaliation‟ for such local aggression as the

Communists serenely continued to practice in Indo-China. His policy often seemed to be that

of talking toughwhile cutting down the big stick by restricting the military budget. A like

policy had at last trapped Louis-Napoleon, causing him to fall into the disaster of the Franco-

Prussian War.

“Among his weaknesses was a psychological obtuseness that caused him repeatedly to be

taken by surprise when others reacted to his words in a way that a more sensitive and

intuitive man would -have anticipated.

“John Foster Dulles was not an attractive man. He was not a success as a diplomat because

his bad faith in dealing with allies, whether real or apparent, all but broke up the Western

coalition - most notably in‟the Suez crisis of 1956.

“Mr. Dulles was not a „good man.‟ The incessant public proclamation of his own moral

principles was always associated with his political advantage, while the principles

themselves were not conspicuously translated into scruples when it came to the means of

realizing his objectives.

“Under circumstances one would prefer, for his biographer, not a good man but someone

who knew human corruption. When the time comes, however, to write the definitive

biography, no one less than a Shakespeare will be big enough for the job.”

Dulles was a morally insecure man of gigantic proportions. His personal traits were magnified

and

came to form the image of America. All the shortcomings of American foreign policy today are

to

be traced to the unreal character of Dulles. They are the traits of Fear.

There is in Hughes‟ book another confrontation, between the former Secretary Humphrey and

Dulles. This again shows the moral perceptiveness of the author.

“The long dialogue between Humphrey and Dulles illuminates an odd but common enough

fact of political life: the anomalous inconsistency and contrast, within each man, between

the personal and the political temperaments. For it fell to the cool and withdrawn Secretary

of

State, a man of parochial spirit in many respects, to speak for a relatively more open, aware

and responsive view of the world at large. And the Secretary of the Treasury, a man of un-

usually warm and expansive personality, served as the uncompromising spokesman for a

world view peculiarly grudging and parochial. So open and receptive a personality was

Humphrey, so largely free of intellectual vanity, that it seemed unlikely that much time could

pass without his acquiring a wider vision. And the fact that no such change would occur

probably offers as much commentary on the political environment in which he found himself,

as upon the individual.”

It is interesting to analyze political figures in the light of this test. The book of Nixon, Six Crises,

is a treasure-trove in this respect. Its analysis confirms what Eisenhower said about him: “I

watched

Dick a long-time, and he just hasn‟t grown.” Nixon suffered, says Hughes, “the anguish of

irresolution.” Having no moral security and directive within himself, principles for him were

only

instruments of his advancement. “Was a clear-cut stand on civil rights really worth the loss of

that

shimmering vision of all those Southern electoral votes?”

The list shows many interesting items. Take for example, the peculiar combination of

Cowardice,

Aggressiveness, and Superiority. Maybe all of you know people who have this combination. The

minute you scratch off that superior surface and that aggressive pseudo-dynamic, out pops the

coward. Therefore you can always beat such people with courageous frankness, by calling their

bluff.

The greatest and almost cosmic example of this kind of fearful and aggressive cowards - note the

double meaning of the word “fearful” - were the Nazis. When these brutal, aggressive, people of

the

super-race sat in their cells in Nuremberg, much of the time they cried. Here is a passage from

the

report by the U. S. Court Psychiatrist, Dr. D. M. Kelly:

“After he had been in jail about six months and just shortly before the trial was to begin,

Kaltenbrunner (Himmler‟s deputy) became extremely depressed. I visited him frequently in

his cell. Almost every time he broke down and cried. He was frightened and wanted to be

comforted. He was sure he would not receive a fair trial. It was a true case of the crybaby

who is convinced that „everybody picks on me.‟ All the toughness had melted away. The

hardness of character which marked him as an executioner had been replaced by this soft,

sobbing personality who eagerly sought reassurance as to his future.”

The Nazi, of course, is the typical man of fear, of insecure morality, the authoritarian personality

who

needs the crutch of the system to sustain his defective self.

Not all examples have to be so crass. Here is a very subtle one. I know a fellow who is an

engineer.

He is one of the most lovable persons I know. He has many of the properties of Faith: Humility,

Cooperativeness, Humaneness, Magnanimity., Generosity, Unpretentiousness, Courage, Naivete,

Relevance, Rationality, Spontaneity, Flexibility, Patience, Perseverance, Vision, Warmth, and

Compassion. But he has a very deep-seated intrinsic Fear. He lacks Serenity, he is often on the

Defensive, he is not Expansive but Narrow, he is Easily Hurt, he has the Heavy Touch, and no

one

works as hard as he and has so little to show for it. Actually he is extremely successful, has a

beautiful home and is down to his last three Cadillacs. He is bustling all the time and Tense,

always

fearing to lose all he has tomorrow. There is nothing anyone can tell him. to change that. He says

he

is no good - he is an accident - he shouldn‟t have been born, life isn‟t really worth all the trouble.

If

the Bomb does away with us all, that‟s all right with him. He is not worried. Yet, he is very much

afraid of losing his money. And since he has no time to think ofmoney he- has to think of

electrons

and metals. He married a wife who thinksof nothing but her banking account. And she has added

and

added to it; and, he says, that gives him a lot of security. We often marry what we think we lack

and

need. You cannot say that this is a bad man; on the contrary, he is a good man. But he is morally

insecure. It seems that Serenity, Expansiveness, Equanimity, and the Light Touch are the

properties

that most deeply reveal our inner Self. Although this person is extremely lovable he has not

developed within himself the totality, the depth, the infinity that he has within himself. It is

perhaps

for this reason that he is lovable. A saint is not lovable, he isloved - and a little awe-inspiring.

None

of us are saints. All of us are morally defective to a larger or smaller degree. To develop

ourselves

intrinsically is the task of our lives. We all have to achieve as much of it as we can in our life

time.

How to Develop Our Self

How do.we do it? There are, as far as I can see, six ways in which we can develop.

I. The first is through Crisis. In crisis, as in a deep sickness, the loss ofa beloved, or a horrible

experience like a concentration camp, we are forced to delve into the depth of ourselves and

there

find our strength. This is a .pretty rough way to self -development. It cannot be voluntarily

brought

about. And when a crisis strikes we may just as well go under than triumph. It may break us

rather

than make us. One of the greatest examples of self-development through crisis is the ordeal of

Franklin D. Roosevelt, the thirty-four months from the day he was stricken with infantile

paralysis

at Campobello, on August 10, 1921, to the day, June 26, 1924, when on the platform of Madison

Square Garden, he nominated Al Smith as the Presidential Candidate for the Democratic Party -

standing on his two legs, holding the podium with his left hand, and waving with his right hand

to

the screaming and cheering crowd - a man triumphantly and almost miraculously emerged from

the

depth of despair to a new life.

II. The second way is through conscious effort, the always continued sensitizing of our

Conscience,

the continuous refinement of our sensibilities. Our conscience is the organ of the self. It is, so to

speak, the barometer of the soul, the measure of its spiritual pressure. In the degree that we

register

normal sensitivity, especially compassion, our conscience is sensitive; in the degree that we do

not,

it is insensitive and undeveloped. We have to register in our conscience all the twenty properties

of

the self-test, check ourselves almost every moment as to how we measure up.

III. The third way of improving ourselves morally is to follow the Example of Sensitive Persons,

especially our wives. A wife who loves is usually more mature than a man. Women, having to

deal

with the creation of life, are usually more sensitive to the true values than men. Men are often

lured

by their intellectual and social power to insensitivity and disregard of the moral. To women both

the

intellectual and - if they are true women - the social play a relatively small role, and love and

compassion play the main role.

IV. However, women value intuitively and do not articulate their value pattern consciously. If we

can do this we may be able to use our. intellectual power to develop ourselves morally. This is

the

fourth way to self -development, One can develop himself morally by intellectually. learning

about

the Self and growing instep with one”s knowledge. This is the way it happened to me, although it

must be said that I was helped by a previous experience of crisis which expanded my awareness

at

one almost shattering stroke. „ Yet, it was my life-long endeavor to find a rational account for

this

experience, and I did find it eventually in the precision of formal axiology. In the same way the

learning of axiology has helped others who have steeped themselves in this new science.

One of the most striking cases is that of one of my former students. When I taught axiology at M.

I. T., the semester started in October and by Christmas we had gotten to intrinsic value. I asked

the

boys to write a term paper during the vacation and analyze any situation or text they wanted, in

terms

of axiology. One of them who was the editor of the school magazine, analyzed hi s own articles -

you

can analyze with this method with great precision, the value of words - a nice thing, for example,

for

advertising - and found much more in them than he had ever thought he had put into them.

Another

analyzed a drama. by T. S. Eliot. A third one came to me just before we left for home and said,

“Sir,

I want you to know that the writing of this paper is the most important thing in my life.” I said,

“How

do you mean?” He: said, “You just wait till you get that paper.” After the vacation I got the

paper.

It was entitled “Homecoming of a Son.” The story was this. He was a very bright fellow, on a

four

-year scholarship at M. I. T., and his parents were Polish immigrants, working in a G. E. lamp

factory, and he was ashamed that they were just workers. Now by learning value. theory, he

knew

very clearly what he had only known vaguely, that a person is what he is and that it is not

important

what he does, and that his parents were wonderful persons. So he wanted to go home and tell

them

how he loved them. But how could he do that without showing them at the same time that he had

never loved them before? The paper was the method he evolved to show them his love without

showing them that he had never loved them. He just produced one value situation after another

and

poured love into it. The whole household changed, laughter and happiness prevailed, it was an

entirely new family.

I got this paper and it was a wonderful thing to read, a miracle consciously brought about. After

about three weeks he comes into my office with a letter from his mother. She wrote that such

strange

and wonderful things had happened during the vacation that she and his dad had been thinking

and

talking about what it was, and they had come to the conclusion that they had never really loved

him.

“I have felt for years that somewhere along the line Daddy and I failed you in some way... Life is

sure

funny, isn‟t it? You go through the years while life is passing you by thinking you are doing

what‟s

right and yet you are blind to what really is happening around you.”

Now just imagine what happened here. Nobody talked to anybody and yet the logic of value

worked

itself out to such a degree that the parents were able to put into words, from their own side, what

the

boy had started out with in the first place. What this young man had done was consciously to put

his

knowledge of value to work. He produced experiences of love in one situation after another and

thus

changed the whole atmosphere in his family. Thus we can change our lives; by consciously

applying

our knowledge of value, either in existing situations or by producing situations of love and of

other

peak experiences, at home or abroad - in concerts and church, museums and lecture halls, in

reading

a book or walking through a woods.

V. This leads us to the fifth way of self -development: through the conscious pursuit of Peak

Experiences. Peak experiences, in the terminology of Abraham Maslow who has studied these

experiences experimentally, are experiences in which we feel ourselves at the peak of life, in the

fullness of our powers and the maximum depth and width of our awareness - as in love, in

musical

and other aesthetic experiences, in experiences of creation and inspiration, and of religious

insight

and rapture. People who are able to make their whole life into a peak experience are called by

Maslow “self- actualizing” people. Such people live in the depth and width of their

consciousness,

and throughout their lives strive to deepen and expand their awareness. They work at their Being,

and not primarily at their doing, their awareness rather than their. activities. Their cognition

gradually becomes sharper for the things that matter and weaker for the things that do not. They

fulfill the prayer that Kierkegaard put as motto to his-book, The Sickness unto Death: “Herr.

Gieb

uns bloede Augen fuer Dinge die nichts taugen, und Augen voller Klarheit in alle Deine

Wahrheit.”

- “Lord, Give us weak eyes for things that matter nothing, and eyes of clarity for all thy truth.”

This

transparent cognition of Being is called by Maslow, B-cognition. B-cognition has the following

characteristics, in which we shall recognize our properties of faith and of intrinsic valuation.

(Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being, Princeton University, 1962, pp. 70 ff)

1. In B-cognition the experience of the object tends to be seen as a whole, as a complete unit,

detached from relations, from _possible usefulness, from expediency, and from purpose. This

means

that the object in B-cognition is a world in itself and has nothing to do with extrinsic values. It is

pure intrinsic value.

2. When there is a B-cognition the percept is exclusively and fully attended to. This means that

we are completely involved in it and that we and the object are one, This kind of perception, says

Maslow, is in. sharp contrast to normal perception. It is seen embedded in its relationship with

everything else in the world. In ordinary cognition the object is seen not so much per se but as a

member of a class, extrinsically, rather than intrinsically. In this kind of absorbed, fascinated,

fully

attended cognition, he says, we may expect richness of detail and a many-sided awareness of the

object. All this confirms empirically what formal axiology states theoretically.

3. B-cognition sees the difference between external objects as relevant to human concerns and

as irrelevant to human concerns. In other words, in the peak experience there is a sharp

distinction

between the relevant and the irrelevant. The peak experience gives us a sense of proportion.

4 .B-cognizing makes perception richer. It is, in other words, valuation, which we defined as

an enrichment of experience.

5. B-cognition is relatively ego-transcending, self-forgetful, ego-less. This is what we call

transparence and transcendence. The self gets out of its own way. One is, says Maslow, so

absorbed

and “poured into” the object that the self in a very real sense disappears. The perceiver and the

perceived are one unit.

6. The peak experience is felt as self-validating, self-justifying moment which carries its own

intrinsic value with it.

7. The peak experience is outside of time and space. In all the peak experiences studied by

Maslow he found a very characteristic disorientation in time and space. “It would be accurate to

say

that in these moments, the person is outside of time and space subjectively. A day may pass as if

it

were a minute but also a minute so intensely lived may feel like a day or a year.”

8. The peak experience is only good and desirable and is never experienced as evil or.

undesirable. This proves empirically that the world is good; for Being-cognition penetrates into

the

very essence of the world. Evil is then only a partial phenomenon, a product of not seeing the

world

whole and unified and of seeing it from a self-centered point of view (p. 77). In this kind of

experience, we can articulate values, B-values, as Maslow calls them. They are, as he himself

states,

the same as our intrinsic values. These B-values are Wholeness, Perfection, Completion,

Orderliness,

Aliveness, Richness, Simplicity, Beauty, Goodness, Uniqueness, Effortlessness - which he also

calls

Ease, Grace, Perfect, Beautiful Functioning, and which we call the Light Touch - Playfulness,

Honesty, Self -Sufficiency.

9. Peak experiences are absolute rather than relative.

10. B-cognition is passive and receptive rather than active.

11. The emotional reaction in the peak experience has a special flavor of wonder, of awe, of

reverence, of humility, and of surrender before the experience as before something great.

12. In the peak experience either the whole world is seen as a unity or the experience, as one

small part of the world, is perceived as if it were for the moment all of the world.

13. In the peak experience there is the ability simultaneously to abstract without giving up

concreteness and the ability to be concrete without giving up abstractness. This is the synthetic

capacity of the creative scientist of grasping the core of a vast field of phenomena in terms of a

formula. This formula- the axiom - gives rise to a system, and this system accounts in detail for

the

whole field. This capacity of the scientist of seeing the whole field at a glance and penetrating to

its

core, is the capacity of genius in any field. There is a famous letter by Mozart where he describes

how his works grow within him, “And the thing, however long it be, becomes indeed almost

finished

in my head, so that I afterwards survey it at a glance, like a. goodly picture or a handsome man,

and

in my imagination do not hear it at all in succession, as it afterwards must be heard, but as a

simultaneous whole. The peak experience is the everyday experience of genius, and insofar as

we

have the peak experience, even momentarily, we are geniuses. “The concrete perceiving which

takes

place in B-cognition,” says Maslow, “is a perception of all aspects and attributes of the object

simultaneously or in quick succession.” If it is the experience of the Self it is the experience of

the

Self as the totality of all extrinsic aspects. This means that B-cognition is much more acute in the

perception of one‟s Self and of others. It penetrates to the core both of ourselves and of other

persons. A person who systematically applies B-cognition to himself is a genius of the Self.

14. The peak experience fuses dichotomies, polarities, and conflicts transcends or resolves them.

The reason is that dichotomies, polarities, and conflicts are the result of classification, of

rubricizing,

in Maslow‟s term, and that B-cognition is non-classificatory and unifying (see 16). It always

finds

the synthesis of the conflicting antitheses. Thus it overcomes evil by good.

15. The person at the peak is god-like, particularly in the complete loving, uncondemning,

compassionate, and perhaps amused acceptance of the world and of the person. He is relaxed and

therefore detached.

16. Perception in the peak moment tends strongly to be non-classificatory. This means, it tends

to be non-extrinsic valuation (see 14).

17. One aspect of the peak experience is a complete though momentary loss of fear, anxiety,

inhibition, defense, and control. It is, in a word, the giving up of f ear.

18. As the essential being of the world is perceived by the person so also does he concurrently

come closer to his own being . In other words, in the peak experience we are one with the whole

world. There is, says Maslow, a kind of dynamic parallelism or isomorphism between the inner

and

the outer world.

Peak. experiences, says Maslow, have a therapeutic effect, they are conversion experiences.

“They

can change the person‟s, view of himself in a healthy direction. They, can change his view of

other

people and his reactions to them. They can change more or less permanently his view of the

world.

They can release him for greater creativity, spontaneity, expressiveness. He remembers the

experience as a very important and desirable happening and seeks to repeat it. The person is

more

apt to feel that life in general is worth while” (p.15).

VI. A sixth way of moral development is to bring about peak experiences by Psycho-drugs.

Here the peak of peak experiences can at least be experienced temporarily, which by mystics,

saints

and creative geniuses are experienced continuously. Psycho-drugs provide a short-cut to such

experiences, which otherwise occur only as a result of continuous and highly concentrated effort.

The effects of these drugs are n * ow being investigated in many parts of the world. In the

forefront

in the United States is the Center for Research in Personality at Harvard University. They

experiment

with three drugs, lysergic acid diethylamide - 25 (LSD), mescaline, and psilocybin, the latter

synthesized from the sacred Mexican mushroom. Psilocybin was administered to over

200volunteers

- graduate students, professors, creative artists. Questionnaires were filled out by the subjects and

analyzed. The results were published by Timothy Leary and Walter Houston Clark in an article

entitled “Religious Implications of Consciousness-Expanding Substances.” First of all, no

adverse.

physiological reactions were observed. “The experience is dramatically intense, plunging the

subjects

into a realm of infinitely heightened reactivity and usually demanding a long period of re-

evaluation,

but no one seemed to have been hurt by the experience.” On the contrary, most subjects claimed

to

have been helped. Sixty-two percent stated that their lives were changed for the better; fifty-five

percent reported “learning a great deal” or “dramatic insights.” Surprising was “the frequent use

of

religious terminology to explain the reactions. Less than ten percent of our original sample were

orthodox believers or church goers, yet such terms as „God,‟ „divine,‟ „deep religious

experience,‟

„meeting the infinite‟ occurred in over half of the reports. “ The experience is one of expanded

consciousness, a state of ego-suspension or self -transcendence. “Such ancient concepts as faith,

belief, trust” seemed to describe it best.

The most dramatic use of the drug so far made was in the rehabilitation of criminals.

“To check on this possibility we undertook a rehabilitation project in the Massachusetts

Correctional Institution, Concord. A representative group of six maximum security inmates

were originally selected by the correctional officials.

“The first psilocybin session was held on a grey, cloudy day in March, 1961.The setting

was

a hospital conference room equipped with six cots, a large table and a record player. The

surroundings were grim - barred windows, drab painted walls. The atmosphere (in spite of

the encouraging orientation) was heavy and anxious. The first person to take the drug was

the senior investigator. (The practice of having the investigator „join the subject‟ in the

experience is a hotly debated issue. Participation by the researcher is not necessary and in

many cases not desirable. The general advantage of investigator‟s participation has to do with

the ego-transcendental, expanded consciousness state. A person operating on the level of

routine space-time-conceptual reality is usually unable to communicate with the transcendent

subject. In the prison situation where distrust, suspicion, and mutual manipulation are so

intense, the deep empathetic rapport of mutual transcendence is particularly necessary.)

Three inmates then followed. Two graduate students and the three remaining inmates acted

as observers in the morning and switched roles in the afternoon.

“After one hour the drug took effect and the nature of reality became sharp and

microscopically clear. The nature of this particular reality was, however, painfully harsh -

three criminals and a psychologist locked behind forbidding bars. Suddenly stripped of his

ego protection - role, status, conceptual machinery - the psychologist felt-frightened and

helpless. With their ego defenses gone, the three prisoners were equally helpless. One inmate

- a former jazz musician - murmured ecstatically and fell on a cot to listen to the recorded

music. Melody was his trusted thread to the transcendent and he later reported the deepest

aesthetic experience of his life, but his raptured gasps were interpreted by the others as

discomfort.

“The psychologist wanly asked another inmate how he felt. A weak forced smile, O.K., I

guess, Doc.‟ The psychologist replied, „Well, I‟m scared, I feel lousy!‟ The two pairs of eyes

met. „Well, Doc, now that you mention it, I‟m scared, too!‟ Then laughter, relaxation, trust

flooded the room. The oldest human experience - caught together in the dark, limitless space

and then the recognition of the basic paradox and the basic resolution - we are all one - we‟re

all in it together - trust and share, it‟s the only way out. The sun was suddenly out and

another long night of the soul was ended. The participants smiled at each other, closed their

eyes and moved onto their own form of transcendental experience.”

“Since that session we have shared over one hundred individual ingestions with prisoners.

While there have been rare moments of panic and distrust, the overall behavior of this group

of maximum security prisoners has been more serene, illuminated and serious than any other

occupational group with whom we have worked.

“A classic aspect of the psilocybin experience is the awakening to broader perspectives -

the

sudden insight that one has been living in a narrow space-time-self context. „It‟s all a game,

Doc, -cops and robbers - we‟re such tough guys! We take it so seriously as though that‟s all

there is to life.‟ This illumination when shared with other group members becomes a

powerful instrument for maintaining philosophic expansion. Men who have been through a

psilocybin session together can perpetuate some of the transcendental flavor. Most of us

would really prefer to operate with the selfless ecstatic freedom of a Buddha or a saint. We

don‟t because we fear: that the others won‟t take it as seriously, that they will continue their

self-games, will ridicule or take advantage.

“The phenomena of mystical insight occurred so frequently in our studies as to deserve

brief

illustration; for instance, death-rebirth experiences as illustrated by. comments like these: „I

went into the john and sat in the shower and died;‟ or „I was out there looking back at my

body lying on the bed, free of that whole -business;‟ or „I felt helpless and wanted to murder

you guys who did it to me; then I realized it was my own mind doing it; it‟s always been my

own mind imagining trouble and enemies;‟ or the semi-literate tough guy leaping off his cot

shouting, „Doc, this is it! This is what life is all about! We‟ll never live more than we are

right now, this minute!” or „I saw fire everywhere. All of life was fire, I was scared. Then I

knew it was all right; I was part of it. I relaxed and went with it.‟

“In their own words and without religious terminology about one half of these „hardened‟

cynics reported classic mystic, conversion reactions. „All is one!‟ „Th y will be done.‟ Many,

of course, reached this point and drew back. „My mind. My will be done.

“During the last three thousand years rebirth experiences have been induced by

practitioners

of every religious and therapeutic persuasion. The traditional appraisals are: How long does

it last? What effects does it have on observable behavior?

“The problem here is more social than individual. To those of us who became (somewhat

accidentally) deeply identified with the rebirth and rehabilitation of thirty-six criminals it

became disturbingly clear that society is not ready for dramatic changes in our criminal class.

Powerful forces operate to thrust the ex-convict back into the criminal role. However

negative were the environmental pressures before incarceration one can rest assured they are

worse after release. When as thoughtful citizens we read about this situation a sociology text

or a Harper‟s article, we wince. When we see these pressures operating qn comrades, on men

who have become part of ourselves, in whom we have seen divinity reflected - then it really

hurts.

“With these frustrating limitations in mind, let us look at the objective results of our work.

First, the psychological test changes: there were,.statistically significant increases in

socialization, tolerance, responsibility, insight, and significant decreases in psychopathic

tendencies, hostility, cynicism. Ratings by prison officers showed improvement in the

institutional adjustment.

“More important than changes in test forms is the recidivism rate. Where are these

prisoners

located in space-time after their release? Back in prison? On the street? While it is premature

to draw conclusions, the results so far look hopeful. Twenty men have been on the street an

average of eight months. There have been no convictions for new crimes. Five men have

been returned for technical parole violations - drinking, failure or inability to find and hold

a job. Seventy-five percent are holding their own against stiff winds and treacherous currents.

(The expected return rate of ex-convicts to this prison after eight months would be more than

fifty. Of the twenty-five percent who actually did return, none were convicted of new crimes,

but were accused only of technical parole violations.)”

In summary, the consciousness-expanding effects of the drug are similar to those experienced by

mystics. “The exact nature of the experience is usually felt and reported to be ineffable, while the

figures of speech used to describe it and the language used is reminiscent of the mystics.

Psilocybin

seems to mediate an experience of self-discovery - an awareness of who one is - to a degree

never

before enjoyed. „This is what life is all about!”

Insofar as a person is already religious, his spiritual sensitivity expands. “Biblical passages or

religious terms formerly meaningless or pale have suddenly acquired vivid meaning. Like the

renegade who, through conversion experience, suddenly finds himself in possession of the

meaning

of the term „salvation,‟ so he who ingests psilocybin may find this or similar terms illuminated

for

him.”

It may be repulsive to some to combine religion with chemicals. But why should it be? Many

things

which to people of earlier ages were grace or accident - good health, long life, economic security

-

are today commonplace in the developed societies. Many things that were of ultimate importance

in earlier ages, such as witchcraft, are today laughed at. Why should the experience of expanding

consciousness - of which the mystic experience is only one - be reserved to the fortunate few if a

means is available to bring it to many? It may not be an accident that these drugs were

discovered

at precisely the time when the only salvation from collective death is the deepened awareness of

life

of the individual. Perhaps these drugs releasing the power of the individual are the antidote to the

nuclear power released by the nations.

At present, discussions are taking place between the Harvard Center and the Food and Drug

Administration in Washington, concerning the availability and distribution of the drugs, their use

as research substances, the licensing or authorization of responsible institutions to make them

available, etc.

For the science of value, the discovery of these drugs and their effects are a striking confirmation

of

its own results. Often people who take these drugs report their experiences in literally the same

language that is used by formal axiology. Here is one such account, from Newsletter No. 1,

Research

Program on Consciousness-Altering Substances, of the Harvard Center:

“The atmosphere could hardly have been made more pleasant and congenial, The freedom,

spontaneity, and personal warmth within the group and between members of the group

became very meaningful. In these moments the psychology vs. theology business dropped

off, the faculty-student barrier just did not matter, even the friend-stranger game was

minimized. For these few moments we interacted not as role players of status seekers but as

human beings - men who share common sorrows and common joys, some of which we

discussed.

Things going on. inside me took all my attention. Early in my session I fastened upon the

question of the distinction between knower and known, recalling Allport‟s and Hall and

Lindzey‟s discussion of whether the self should be conceptualized in terms of the processes

of knowing (self-abstractions by which one defines himself (self-as-object, proprium). It

seemed to me that these were being dissociated in me, and I as knower was unable to confirm

my knowing or to sustain my sense of identity by referring to any stable elements of myself.

I recall looking at a Buddhist symbol, a circle divided into two S-shaped parts, one black and

one white, with a center in each of the semi-circles which formed the S. I struggled to bring

the two centers together, as if „the I‟ had to do so to survive. I can remember twisting and

straining with all my might, saying I-I-I-I-I-I and somehow being aware that the matter of my

universe was to maintain the I while all else was stripped away.

“Two related feelings were present. One was a tremendous freedom to experience, to be I.

It became very important to distinguish between I and me, the latter being an object defined

by patterns and structures and responsibilities - all of. which had vanished - and the former

being the subject experiencing and feeling.”

The experience makes clear the nature of the Self as the organ of valuation.

“I. regard the experience as a personal „shaking to the foundations.‟ The radical facing of

myself forced - or perhaps I should say released by the drug - was a trauma the depth of

which was totally unexpected. I would describe the experience as a conversion experience

of the most. radical nature rather than a mystical experience of the classical variety as Stace

has defined it. Yet, though without many of the indications of mystical experience, I know

I will understand the mystics much better, having had the experience.

“Another very basic discovery was a clear sense of values - I knew what was important in

my life and what was less important more clearly than ever before. I saw clearly how certain

fatuous and confused ideas were leading me in wrong pathways; so some of my senti-

mentalities were pierced.

Finally, the experience confirms the need for structuring infinities. The subject experiences

infinities

heaped upon infinities, and gets confused about their mutual relationships. Axiology can serve as

an Ariadne thread in this welter of ineffable immensities.

The experience of infinities upon infinities in the Self makes this experience appear god-like,

divine,

a religious experience. It is, indeed, the generic experience of which the religious experience is

one

species and of which the other peak experiences are other species. What we find within us when

we

penetrate to the roots of our Selves, no matter what route we take, can only be described as God.

For

it has all the characteristics by which we define God. Thus, the Self and God are closely

connected,

indeed identical. God is within us. It is no accident, therefore, that the properties of Faith are the

properties of the Beatitudes. The experience of the Self, no matter which of the six methods we

employ, leads us to God; and, since we know best the religious aspect of God - rather than the

aesthetic, the ethical or any other - we come to regard the experience as a religious experience.

The Great Commandments

The one who proclaimed the religious experience as an experience of the Self and the Beatitudes

as

properties of the Self was Jesus. Although his sayings have been elaborated by Christian

theologians

throughout the centuries, they have never been followed with historic efficiency by Christians.

Christians have always regarded the Christian Virtues theoretically rather than practically, as

obstacles rather than as impulses to successful living on earth. They have never fully expanded to

live in the infinite realms of faith but restricted themselves to the narrow tunnels of fear. They

have

lived like moles rather than like men. Today these moles have mined the hill in which they

burrow

and thrown up frantic fortifications against each other. Unless they rub the dust of the earth from

their blind eyes and face the light of day, these sappers will blow up with their little hill - the

planet.

Earth on which they revolve around the Sun. Today, to live in the infinity of the spirit has

become

a necessity of man‟s survival. We either live eternally or not at all. The Scripture is being

fulfilled

by man‟s cosmic power. We have conquered the world around us with our minds. We must now

conquer the world within us with our spirits. We must go back to the map of the Self that Jesus

drew

for us.

Jesus was the one person who for the first time in history has most deeply articulated the infinity

of

the human being. We were all raised in the Hebrew-Christian religion - unless we have a

Mohammedan or a Buddhist among us. The religious difference between the Jew and the

Christian

is that the Christian accepts Jesus as the Messiah, the Savior of the world, the Son of God. The

Christos, whereas the Jew does not. The Christians are, as you know, originally Jews who

accepted

the Messiah nature of Jesus. And the Jews are Christians who do not accept it and for whom

Jesus

is just another prophet. Actually, very few Christians accept Jesus as the Christ, and thus most

Christians have the Jewish rather than the Christian view of Jesus. For us, there is no difference

between the two views. We see Jesus as that person - I say not “man” but “person” because I

believe

he is more than a man, but this is my personal belief - as that person who for the first time in

human

history articulated exactly the nature of the infinity of man. But he has articulated it in sayings

and

parables which are difficult to understand and have come down to us in a book which almost

nobody

has learned to read.

The Bible is written in a very peculiar language, a language which is not the language of

everyday,

and it deals with a very peculiar subject, the subject of infinity. Where there is no space and no

time -

what is there? There is, for Jesus, the human Self.

Everything we have said so far has been expressed by Jesus in what he called the two great

Commandments - and which are found in both the New and the Old Testament: “Thou shalt love

the

Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy

strength,” and “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Since God is within us, the

Commandment

says that you must live yourself fully: intrinsically - with all thy heart and with all thy soul;

systemically - with all thy mind; and extrinsically - with all thy strength. When you do this, you

not

only live your Self, you love your Self. And the second Commandment says that once you do

this

you will love your neighbor as you love yourself. For, as we know, in the depth of the Self we

are

all one. Thus, says Jesus, in the depth of the Self we find not only ourselves, but also our

fellowman -

and God. The vertices of the infinite cones, we said, that are we symbolically, all meet in one

point.

At this point there is unity of all men in God. It is a community which is not in space and time.

Jesus

calls it The Kingdom of God.

The key to the kingdom is in the hands of everyone of us: it is love of our own Selves - or, in

order

to exclude misunderstanding as if self-love were the same as selfishness - it is liking our Selves.

Unless you like yourself you cannot like anybody else. Unless you feel that you are of

importance

nothing can be of importance to you. You must feel that you are important. You must take

yourself

seriously. If you take yourself as an accident that just as well might not have happened, if you

dislike

your own self, then you are lost. You are a loss to the universe. You cannot enrich the world of

God.

God has created. you for the enrichment of His world. If you yourself feel unworthy of yourself

then,

of course, you cannot fulfill the mission that you are given by your birth. You must make

yourself

worthy of yourself in order, to be worthy of God and worthy of your fellowman. Remember the

tragic case of Marilyn Monroe. She was a lovely and lovable woman - but with a tragic flaw in

her

Self. She. always had, she said, a feeling deep down that she was cheating someone, that she was

not

genuine. She tried desperately to overcome this deep feeling, to make herself whole, to remedy

this

fatal defect in the structure of her Self - and she would have made it had she not fallen victim to

one

of her desperate depressions. For her conscience and her consciousness were more sensitive than

those of most other people in her predicament. She tried desperately to love herself and to love

others. Love was showered upon her, but she was unable to respond fully. She left her fortune to

her

psychoanalyst - for she was unable to give her heart to one who loved her.

It is perhaps no accident that this woman became a symbol for our time. They called her a sex

symbol. Actually she was a symbol for our spiritual frustration. We gain the whole world and yet

lose our soul. We put our fortunes into soul-substitutes, from churches to father-and-

motherlands,

and occasionally psychoanalysts, and we die alone. And, if things go on as they do, we will die

by

our own hands, in national suicide. It may even be, if Fail-Safe fails, that we may all die while

our

President is reaching in vain for the telephone that might have cleared up the error that is sending

us all down to hell.

Lack of love is the cause of all the trouble in the world. If everyone would love himself and thus

his

neighbor, all problems would be resolved. We would live love. This is literally the Gospel truth,

found in both Jesus and the Prophets, both in the Old Testament (Leviticus 19:18) and the New

(Matt. 22:37-40). The Bible is one.

To like oneself, as we have seen, is not an easy matter. Philosophers have tried to give a method

of

how to do it, from Socrates to Kierkegaard. What they have said can be systematized in what I

call

the Four C‟s of Ethics. They are c‟s as little as the three r‟s of reading, writing, ‟rithmetic are r‟s.

The

first “c” is Socrates‟: Know Thyself. You have to find out what kind of a fellow you are, what

kind

of properties you have, what is the material that is given to you to live with - to live by, live for,

live

of. You have to make the inventory of yourself.

The second “c” is Kierkegaard‟s: Choose Thyself. This means that once you have found out what

a

louse you are, you have to accept yourself and make the best of it because this is all you‟ve got.

You

have to choose yourself - you are your own material. And this is the material you have to

develop

to infinity, both upward and downward. There is absolutely no limit, from the bottom at which

you

start to the height to which you can go. As you remember, Jesus was7crucified between two

bandits -

“Murderers” says Luther‟s translation - and one of them repented. Jesus said to him: “Today

shalt

thou be with me in Paradise.” Mary Magdalene was a prostitute and became a saint, Matthew

was

a tax collector, which at that time meant a robber and collaborator with the Romans, and he

became

the writer of the Gospel. There is no limit as to the lowness at which you may start. But no

matter

how despicable you are to yourself you must choose yourself, accept yourself as the one you are.

“I

am the one I am.”

The third “c” is Pico della Mirandola‟s and also Kierkegaard‟s; Create Thyself. Make yourself

into

the very best you can. This process must start very early and must never stop. You are your own

creation. You must start as early as you can, but it is never too late for it. There is more joy in

heaven

for one sinner who repenteth than for ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.

The fourth “c” is Jesus‟: Give Thyself. This means, forget all limitations, be generous with your

own

self. Give your own self to your fellow man and to the world. Love your neighbor as you love

yourself. Throw your bread on the water.

To love yourself and within yourself your fellow man is, thus, the end result of a chain of self -

discoveries, from self-knowledge to self-choosing to self-creating, to- self-giving. You can only

give

yourself when you have created yourself, in the qualitative process of self-differentiation, to

complete transparency, without obtuseness or opaqueness of soul. For only in that case will your

self

not be in your own way and will you be intrinsically free. Only then will you be able to draw

freely

from your own resources. The more you thus grow transparently within yourself the more power

you

will find within you - as if you had found the key to a treasure house. You will not only be able

to

love yourself, your wife, your family, life itself - you will find that your power to love is

inexhaustible. Your love will become deeper and deeper, richer and richer, get ever new facets,

so

that what you call love today will appear like playing marbles tomorrow. The same growth will

go

on in your thinking process. Roosevelt, after his crisis at Campobello, said, “What I called

thinking

yesterday was merely looking out of the. window.” The fullness of Being will be yours. And you

will

have made the leap from the finite to the infinite from the quantitative to the qualitative. For,

while

the finite is quantitative, the infinite is qualitative. To understand this we have to understand the

logic of the infinite.

The Logic of the Infinite

The Gospel, I said, deals with a very peculiar subject - infinity. What is infinity? Infinity is

strange

only for the finite mind. Actually, its laws are as definite, indeed, as mathematically definite, as

are

those of the finite. The fundamental law of the finite is: The part is smaller than the whole. The

fun-

damental law of the infinite is: The part equals the whole. If you have an infinity and you deduct

an

infinity what have you left? An infinity. The one who dis covered this mathematically, was

Galileo,

and he who elaborated it was the German mathematician, Georg Cantor, just about a hundred

years

ago. If I write down all the numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so-on ad infiniturn, how many numbers do

I

have? The last number gives me “the number of all numbers counted up to then. The number 3

gives

me the number of numbers counted up to 3, that is, the number 1, the number 2, and the number

3 -

3 numbers in all. If you take all the numbers, the last number must give you the number of all

the

numbers counted, or rather countable, for no one can actually count them. Cantor invented, the

name

of that number, he called it alef zero, ?0. He did not accidentally call it by this name, the first

letter

of the Hebrew alphabet, which originally was the image of a bull‟s head. Not only did he have to

bull

through this new kind of mathematics with his colleagues, he also thought that it expressed

symbolically what the Prophets and Jesus were driving at. He thought it was the mathematical

expression of eternity - and he was right. Formal axiology uses his symbols and operations to

demonstrate the laws of intrinsic value.

Alef zero is the magnitude - or cardinality of all countable numbers. Let us write them down

1 2 3 4 5 . . . . . . . . . . ?0

Now let us write under them

2 4 6 8 10 . . . . . . . . . . ?0

every second number. Obviously, there are half as many even numbers as there are even and odd

numbers. Yet, equally obviously, I can write under every number an even number; so that there

are

as many even numbers as there are odd and even numbers together, that is,?0... In other words,

one

half of ?0 is ?0. Or, since there are as many odd numbers as there are even numbers (?0) and all

numbers (?0) minus the odd numbers (?0) gives us the even numbers (?0) we have ?0 - ?0 = ?0.

Also, since odd plus even numbers gives all numbers, ?0 + ?0 = ?0. As a matter, of fact, any

operation with ?0. gives ?0, except one, exponentiation with ?0, which gives. a higher kind of

infinity. ?1. Thus, ?0 x ?0 = ?0, but ?0?0 = ?1. What this means we shall see presently. But first

let us look at the importance of infinite arithmetic for value thinking.

You might think it is important only for mathematics or the Bible; but it is important also in

industry.

You remember the Hawthorne experiment of the Western „Electric Company. In that experiment

a

group of girls was taken out of the factory and experimented upon. They got better working

conditions, and productivity increased. They got worse working conditions, and productivity

increased. They got better lighting, productivity increased; they got worse lighting, productivity

increased. They got rest periods, mid-morning lunches, shortened work week, productivity

increased.

They got no rest period, no mid-morning lunches, a lengthened work week; productivity

increased.

No matter what was, done, productivity increased. Roethlisberger and Dickson, who wrote up

the

experiment in their book Management and the Worker, shook their heads, and wondered what

kind

of logic was at work. Any particular thing we do, they concluded, is unimportant, the only

important

thing is the attention we give them and the cooperation they give us. And this was exactly right.

What was mobilized was intrinsic valuation: “stores of latent energy and productive cooperation”

were uncovered.

In intrinsic valuation, where the human being is seen in its infinity, the only thing that can

happen

is addition. Once these girls were given intrinsic human attention everything that happened was

addition. The finite arithmetic of subtraction simply did not apply. It is only one logic of three

which

applies to the industrial organization. Roethlisberger and Dickson call it the specialist logic of

efficiency. It is systemic in our terminology; the second is the logic of social relations, extrinsic;

and

the third, the logic of human relations, intrinsic. The authors are especially clear on the

“limitations

of specialist logic:”

“Each of these specialists is assigned a specific function and occupies a certain position in

the total company structure. In performing his function the specialist tends to select from the

total work situation only those aspects for which he is functionally responsible. The engineer

is likely to be oriented to engineering problems and not to the total organization as such. The

cost accountant is oriented primarily to those aspects of the total situation which can be

included under the symbols of cost. The same is true with all other specialist groups. Each

expert tends to appraise the work situation in terms of his specialty, which means that some

part of the total situation is left out. As a consequence, the total group situation. is never

accurately represented as a functioning whole and the specific relations which obtain between

the various. specialist functions and the total organization are frequently ignored or

inaccurately stated. Some of these specialist agencies fail to take systematic account of the

social organization, particularly that part of the social organization which is informal. This

means that the control which is exercised by management tends to be based upon an

incomplete analysis of the entire situation, and unless that part which is ignored is intuitively

understood and taken into account by management the control exercised is likely to be

inadequate.”

A contributing factor to this inadequacy of systemic control is that the specialist becomes

emotionally involved in his rules and makes a fetish out of them, that is, starts to value them

intrinsically rather than the people.

“Another aspect of this problem can best be described as the „emotional identification‟

which

is likely to occur between the specialist and his „logics.‟ Theoretically, the logics in terms of

which these specialists perform their functions are merely abstractions from the concrete

situation. If they are so regarded by the specialist and their useful limitations of application

clearly understood, no difficulties arise. Instead, however, these logics sometimes tend to

become dominant in the thinking of the person who uses them, and he comes to regard them

as being „right‟ for all occasions. As a result of this emotional identification with certain

abstractions an experimental attitude is not achieved. Any evidence not in keeping with these

systems of logic come to be regarded as „wrong‟ and the possibility of understanding is

thereby diminished. This emotional attachment of the person to his logic comes about in part

because of the fact that by exercising his logic the specialist maintains his position in the

social organization; consequently, any threat to it is interpreted as a threat to his integrity and

security. The logic thereby becomes not merely a tool for investigation but also a weapon of

defense.

This kind of transposition of intrinsic valuation f rom men to rules is one of the most unfortunate

features of man‟s make-up. We give eternal value to what has only limited temporal value, to the

systems of our minds. We thus become fanatics of one system or another - of the corporation, of

a

Church or a State, a dogma or an ideology - and in the name of the system we ride rough-shod

over

men. Behind every great historical catastrophe stands a fanatic with fetishistic dedication to a

system.

The Hawthorne experiment laid bare the limitation of the industrial system and the need for his

complementation by logics of social and human values.

Another industrial example for a different than the finite logic are the famous coffee breaks. At

the

beginning an industrialist got it in his head that his workers should have coffee breaks, one in the

morning and one in the afternoon, of fifteen minutes each. He called in his engineers to ask them

what they thought about the idea, and they were horrified. They got out their slide rules and

figured

it out - 10,000 men, half an hour a day is 5, 000 hours a day, 25,000 hours a week,100,000 hours

a

month - impossible - “We‟ll go broke. Don‟t do it.” The valiant industrialist did it anyway, and

the

result was that production went up instead of down. The engineers had been wrong with their

slide

rules. There was nothing wrong with their logic - only it was the wrong logic. There was nothing

wrong with their arithmetic - if people don‟t work for half an hour a day, production is lost. The

only

thing wrong was the arithmetic itself. It is wrong to see people and their work as a subject to

slide

rules and to the arithmetic of production. There is more to people than this arithmetic. There is

also

their feeling and good will - and these are not subject to the slide rules of finite arithmetic -

although

they are subject to the slide rules of transfinite arithmetic. In that arithmetic, he who gives gains

and

he who gives not loses. In the case of the coffee break, the actual not working of the men for half

an

hour a day increased production - for they gave more of themselves -when they did work.

A third industrial example is profit-sharing. A friend o f mine in Ohio had the following equation

in the books of his foundry at the end of the first year of profit sharing: 100 percent - 50 percent

=

175 percent. It came about as follows. About twenty years ago this man said to himself, I make a

hellva‟ lot of money. I get it from my workers. I think I should cut them in on 50 percent of my

profit. His friends and family said he was nuts, he would lose his shirt, he would have no capital,

he

would go broke. But he did it anyway. The workers were so happy with the plan, not only the.

money

but especially the attention he gave them that they worked a little harder than before. It is a

peculiar

thing that whenever you share the profits in the right spirit, production goes up 40 percent.

Always

this same percentage. The reason is that the workers hold back 40 percent of their capacity. This

can

be mathematically demonstrated. When you appeal to them as persons rather than as workers

you

tap an infinite reservoir of human resources and they give themselves - the fourth “c” of ethics.

They

add 40 percent to productivity. Profits then rise much more steeply, in the case of that particular

foundry, 350 percent. This, shared half with the workers and half with management, gave each

party

175 percent,

In dealing with human beings, the finite arithmetic, where the part is smaller than the whole,

goes

awry, and the transfinite arithmetic, so unfamiliar to us, is just as exact an arithmetic as the finite.

In it, whatever operation you make, you never lose. Once in infinity, you can never lose it. You

can

only go on to ever higher infinities. The only operation that changes an existing alef is to put it

into

the exponent. The result is, precisely, a higher infinity.

Now let us see what that means. To do so we must look at our definition of value in greater

detail.

The-Hierarchy of Values

The measure of value of a thing, we said, is the set of properties which defines the thing. To take

our

chair again, it has four properties, “knee-high” “structure,” “a seat,” “a back.” If it is not knee-

high,

it is not a very good chair. If it is not a structure, but wobbles, it‟s not a good chair but it is a

good,

contraption for circus acrobats. If it has no seat it is not a good chair, and if it has no back it is

not

a good chair either. Thus, if a particular thing is what it is named to be, for example, something

called “a chair” is actually a chair, and if it has the properties of its concept, “chair,” then we call

it

a good such thing. If this thing here having all the. chair properties would be an elephant it would

be a monstrosity.. Anything having the properties of one thing and being called by the name of

another thing is a monstrosity, a freak, a misfit, or simply bad. Thus a four-legged table with

only

three legs is still a four-legged table but a bad one. However, it would be a good wobbly three-

legged

table. The concepts “wobbly” three-legged table” and “four-legged table” are transposed. The

thing

actually is a wobbly three-legged table; but it is not called that. It is called a four-legged table,

though

a bad one. Such transposition of concepts, or of frames of reference, is the definition of disvalue.

Let us now use the concept as measure. If the thing has all the conceptual - definitional or

intensional

- properties, we call it good. Let us say that the number of properties contained in any conceptual

intension is p, whatever that may be. A good chair, or a good anything, then, has p properties. If

it

has half the properties it is a so-so or average thing and has p/2 properties. If it has more than

half

the properties it is a fair thing and has p/2 + m properties, where m is less than p/2, and since p =

4,

p/2 is 2, and less than that is 1. The chair would be fair if it had p/2 + m = 2 +1 = 3 properties. In

other cases, of course, fair would have a different number of properties. Bad is less than half p/2

-

m, in the case of the chair with only one property, the chair would be pretty bad. In sum, the four

values of a thing, goodness, fairness, averageness, and badness, can be measured as follows,

using

the example where p = 4.

Intension of “chair”

?- - - goodness - - - - - -? p

?- - fairness - - -? p/2 + m

?- average -? p/2

? bad ? p/2 - m

All this is extremely simple. But now look what is happening. Let us put a girl on the chair so we

get

some differences of opinion; for if four people look at a chair it is difficult to get real differences

of

opinion. There she is sitting with four fellows sitting around her. One says, “Boy, that‟s a girl!”

What

does he mean? She‟s got all the girl properties, she is p. Another says, “Aw, I don‟t think she‟s

so

hot.” What does he mean? Well, she‟s so-so, not so hot not so bad either. He says she‟s p/2. The

other says, “I think she‟s pretty good.” She‟s p/2 + m. The fourth says, “I don‟t know what

you‟re

talking about. I think she‟s awful.” She‟s still a‟girl, but she doesn‟t have much of girl qualities.

He

doesn‟t mean to say she‟s a bad girl; that wouldn‟t be so bad maybe. No, to him she‟s p/2 - m.

The question then is, What is the value of the situation, of the fellows saying this about the girl?

Or,

what is the value of the girl in the situation with these fellows? What does what they say add up

to?

Very simple. The one said p, the other p/2, the third p/2 + m, the fourth p/2 - m. So let us add up

what they say: p + p/2 = p/2 + m + p/2 - m. The result is 2 ½ p.

This is a peculiar result. Remember, p is the totality of all the qualities. Does she then have more

qualities than she has? Indeed, she does. And this is the core definition of value: Valuation is a

play

with pure properties. You abstract from the thing itself a take the properties of the thing as a set

with

which you play around. Depending upon how you play you call the thing good, bad, indifferent,

and

so on. In other words, Fact is only one of the sets of properties that a thing has and it is that set

upon

which people most readily agree. This is a desk because it has all the desk properties. We all

agree

on that. However, when it comes to Valuation, you abstract from that factual set and just take the

properties of the thing by themselves, playing around with them, arranging and rearranging them

in

your imagination.

Evaluation is an imaginative play with properties and not looking at the thing itself. And fact

itself

is only one set of the thing‟s properties. This means that valuation is a function of the

imagination.

If you lack imagination you see only facts, like the dejected fellow in a Thurber cartoon about

whom

the ladies gossip: “He doesn‟t know anything except facts.” But, facts being themselves sets of

properties, they are not so factual at all.

To give you an example, one day I was sitting in my study; my wife came in the door and she

kind

of coiled back and s aid: “What‟s going on, are you here ?” I said, “Sure I am, here I am.”. She

said,

“But the car isn‟t in the garage.” I said, “What? It must be stolen.” We rushed to the garage and

there

big as daylight stood the car. She had been looking in the garage but had not seen it because she

had

thought I was out. We see what we conceive to be. Even fact is a part of what we have in our

mind.

Valuation then is a play with pure properties; and axiology is the score of that play, just as music

is

a play with sounds, and musical science is the score of that play.

Now, let us continue our play. I can do much more with the sets of girl properties or of chair

properties or of any other set of properties than merely add. I can subtract, multiply, divide,

arrange

and rearrange these sets in sub-sets, and the result of all this is value. Let us ask ourselves how

many

different values a thing can have, Since the given set of properties and each of the subsets of this

set

is a different value, and since according to a well-known formula, a set of p items has 2p - 1 sub-

sets,

a thing with p properties can have 2p - 1 sub-sets of properties. This number, then, 2p - 1, is the

totality of different values which a thing can have.

Now, look what that means. Our chair, for example, has four properties. Its total value then is 24

1

= 15. A chair with four properties can have 15 different values. Why? Because it can have one

value

of goodness; there‟s only one set of all properties. In combinatorial analysis 4C4 = 1. There are 6

ways in which the chair can be so-so; it can be knee-high and have a seat but wobble and have no

back; it can have a seat and a back but not be knee-high and wobble, and so on. There are 4 ways

in

which the chair can have 3 properties, 4C3 = 4,. hence four ways in which the chair can be fair;

and

there are 4 ways in which it can..be bad, for 4C1 = 4. Thus, our chair can have one goodness, 4

fairnesses, 6 averagenesses, and 4 badnesses. In toto, a thing can have 2p - 1 values because

every

sub-set of its set of properties is, by definition., a value.

Let us apply this, say, to job evaluation. Suppose you have evaluated a job as so many properties,

let‟s say, ten. Then in how many ways can the employee fulfill or not fulfill this job? In 210 - 1 =

1,023 ways. There are 1,023 ways in which the employee can perform or not perform one

particular

job which is defined by ten properties. To be exact, there is 1 way of good performance, 385

ways

of fair performance, 252 ways of average performance, and 385 ways of bad performance. By

dividing the possible number of performances in each value through the possible total of all

performances we get the percentage of performance expectation: 0.098 percent for good, 37.64

percent for fair, 24.64 percent for average, and 37.64 percent for bad. The difference between

this

theoretical expectation and the actual performance in your shop is an objective measure of your

shop

performance.

The calculus can, of course, also be applied to gauge the acceptance of your product. If the

product,

in the mind of the public, is determined by 10 properties, the theoretical expectation of

evaluations

possible of it is 210 = 1,024, adding one evaluation zero; and there are 385 ways in which he

product

may appear fair or bad and 252 ways in which it may appear so-so. These ways may in turn be

broken

down; of the 385 ways in which the thing may appear fair, there are 10 ways in which 9

properties

may be accepted, 45 ways in which 8 may be accepted, 120 ways in which7, and 210 ways in

which

6 properties may be accepted. The corresponding percentages of expectation, are, respectively,

0.90,

4.4, 11.73, and 20.53. Again, the actual acceptance as against the possible acceptance is an

objective

measure of your product‟s success.

Here we have a calculus of value, measuring much that at present is intangible.

This calculus, however, has much wider scope. The above application is valid only if properties

can

be enumerated. But how if they cannot, if you cannot make a list of specifications? In business,

suppose you have too choose an elevator boy. There isn‟t much difficulty in doing that because

you

can put down in writing the specifications of that job, and if he can push a button and open a

door

and smile, or not smile for that matter, he will be a good elevator boy. But how do you choose

the

president of a company? What specifications can you write down for the president of a company

who

may have to make decisions of hundreds of millions of dollars in terms of hundreds of thousands

of

men? How about the specifications for the job of President of the United States? How about

specifications for your wife? How did you choose her? What did you have to go by? You knew

very

well that if you would have a list of specifications of possible wives and you would carry that

along

when you were looking for girls to marry, it could happen that you would find one with all the

specifications, but you wouldn‟t marry her because you wouldn‟t like her. There have been cases

like

this. Here it seems matters become too intangible for calculation. Yet, even these values can be

made

tangible, even they can be measured, if only we apply transfinite rather than finite arithmetic. If

we

regard finite arithmetic as only one possible kind of arithmetic and transfinite arithmetic as

another

possible kind of arithmetic, then we can arrange concepts according to the number of properties

that

define them.

This number of properties can either be finite (n) or transfinite. The first two kinds of transfinite

numbers are ?0, which is the cardinality of all countable or denumerable numbers (integers,

fractions,

algebraic numbers), and ?1, which is the cardinality of all non-countable or non-denumerable

numbers (transcendental numbers such as ? ). Thus, we have three kinds of concepts, those

defined

by n properties and those defined by ?1 properties. The first are constructed concepts, the second

are

abstracted concepts, the third are singular concepts.

So far we. have spoken only of abstract concepts such as “chair” or “girl.” Let us look at these

abstract concepts again. Abstract concepts are concepts which are abstracted from space-time

empirical things. In other words, in the world we have all the chairs or girls or what-not, and we

abstract those properties which all these kinds of objects have in common. . The result is the

properties of the concept “chair,” “girl” or “what-not” (or “X”).

We learn abstract concepts when we learn to speak. Since, as we have seen, the concept of a

thing

is also the measure of the value of that thing, when we learn to speak we also learn how to value.

When the child asks mother: “What is this?” mother gives him the name of a thing - and with

this

name the child has a measure of value for all things of this kind. All things that correspond to

that

name and have all the properties the child has connected with that name, are good such things. A

good chair is a chair that has all the properties the child has learned chairs to have. The child‟s

mind

is very alive to sets of properties and to extending them to things not yet experienced. My little

boy,

when he came to the ocean first, looked in and said, “Daddy, mirror.” I said,“No, this mirror is

liquid.” I added another property. I said, “Such a liquid mirror is called water.” So you learn the

words of the language by learning their meaning as a set of properties, and this set of properties

is

the measurement of value for the thing named. Those of you who have read the autobiography of

Helen Keller or seen the play, The Miracle Worker will remember the tremendous excitement of

a

child on learning names, when her tutor, Miss Sullivan, spelled into her hand the word W-A-T-

E-R.

The excitement is not only because the name names, but also because it values. When we give a

child

the concepts abstracted from the world we give him the capacity not only to know the world but

also

to value it. We give him the value of the world itself.

Concepts abstracted from sense reality have the following important characteristic: their

properties

have been abstracted one by one. You have to take common properties of things and have to

learn

one by one, one after another, all of these properties. A set of items which can be identified one

by

one is mathematically called a denumerable set. If I could not enumerate and thus identify these

properties I would not know a thing. Denumerability is the essence of discursive knowledge.

Now,

how many properties can I abstract that things have in common? If I have a huge number of

things,

very few properties will be in common; if I have very few things, they will have very many

properties

in common; if I have only two things I can abstract an infinite number of common properties.

The

range of the number of properties that can be abstracted, then, is between one and infinity. Or,

the

number of properties of an abstract concept is, at most, denumerable infinity, or ?0.

When an abstract concept is fulfilled or not fulfilled there appear degrees of valuation, goodness,

badness, as we have seen. Such values are what we. called extrinsic values. What is valued is not

the

thing in itself but its belonging to a certain class. A good chair is good because it is a good

member

of the class of chairs.. Extrinsic value is the degree of fulfillment of an abstract concept, that is, a

concept defined by a denumerably infinite set of properties.

Abstract concepts are one kind of concepts. Now let us go to a second kind, concepts not

abstracted

from the world but constructed by the human mind - not abstracts but constructs. Have you ever

wondered why there are no bad geometrical circles? Because the geometrical circle is defined

with

such precision in the system, of geometry - as “plane closed curve equidistant from a center” -

that

if a curve does not have all these properties and lacks just one of them, it is not what it was

defined

to be. It is not a bad circle, it is not a circle.

Why aren‟t there bad electrons? For the same reason. When a. thing seems like an electron and

lacks

an electron property we cannot call it an electron; and the main endeavor of modern physics is to

find

out about these “bad” electrons and give them new names, positron, neutron, meson, and so on.

Why

are there no bad square roots of minus one? For the same reason. Why is there equity in the law?

Because even in the law there are such exact definitions that when a thing lacks a part of the

definition it is not what it is defined to be, and in order to relieve the tension between the system

and

reality, jurists have invented equity and other institutions. If the systemic rule remains unrelieved

you

have legal injustices, as in Menotti‟s powerful opera The Consul. Again, you have moral

injustices

if, for example, you define a human being by a system, say, the system of spectroscopy. If you

define

a human as “white,” and all “non-whites” as “non-human” you use a minimum of properties to

define

a very complex being.

Such a definition is a transposition of frames of reference and hence, as we have seen, not good.

When people value such systems intrinsically then they become fetishistic of these systems.

Sarah

Patton Brown, in The Desegrated Heart (New York, 1962) shows how Americans in the South

have

built up a dehumanizing system, an elaborate code for dealing with negroes, and how this system

debases both their own and their victims‟ humanity. As we have seen, we may systemically

value

anything, even people, and this is all right within its limits. The four fellows who judged the girl

on

the chair, valued her systemically. They did not see her as a person but only as a physiological

system. A man who sees all girls exclusively systemically is a girl fetishist. Don Juan is the

prototype

of such a fetishist, as Kierkegaard has shown in Either/Or.

Constructs have the following characteristics:

The number of properties is finite.

A construct gives rise to only two values, either perfection or non-existence.

There are no degrees such as good, bad, indifferent, and so on

This kind of value is what we called systemic value.

Now to the singular concept. Let us say I think of my wife. I can think of her systemically, as a

physiological system - in the way‟Hans Castorp in Thomas Mann‟s Magic Mountain looked at

the

x-rays of his beloved, Madame Chauchat. I can see her systemically as a cog in the machine of

my

life. I can see her extrinsically, as a member of the class of wives, or of women, or of cooks, etc.,

etc.,

and compare her with other wives, women, or cooks. And finally, I can think of her as she really

is,

in her uniqueness, her very Self-hood. In this case “my wife” is.a singular concept. How many

properties does she have? She has an infinity of properties, and I cannot put my finger on any

one

of these properties. I see her, as the psychologists say, as a “gestalt” or as the mathematicians

would

say, as a “continuum.” I neither abstract from nor construct her. I see her, as Maslow says,

concrete

in abstraction and abstract in concreteness. She is the axiom of my life. I live her life, identifying

myself with her. She is an intrinsic value. Logically, this means that the number of properties she

has

is non-denumerable infinity, ?1. Intrinsic value is the fulfillment of a singular concept, that is, a

concept defined by a non-denumerably infinite set of properties.

Let us summarize:

1. Value is the degree in which a thing fulfills its concept.

2. There are three kinds of concepts - abstract, construct, and singular. Correspondingly,

there

are three kinds of values:

(1) Systemic value as the fulfillment of the construct,

(2) Extrinsic value as the fulfillment of the abstract,

(3) Intrinsic value as the fulfillment of the singular concept.

The difference between these three concepts is that the number of properties in a construct is

finite,

(n), in an abstract is denumerably infinite (?0), and in a singular concept is non-denumerably

infinite

( ?1). We thus have a hierarchy of values. Since value is an enr ichment of properties, a value is

the

higher a value the richer it is in properties. Since systemic value means a thing with n properties,

extrinsic value a thing with ?0 properties, and intrinsic value a thing with ?1 properties, it follows

that intrinsic value is a higher value than extrinsic value, and extrinsic value a higher value than

systemic value.

The hierarchy of values corresponds to a hierarchy of experiences. The experience of intrinsic

value

is richer than the experience of extrinsic value, and the experience of extrinsic value is richer

than

the experience of systemic value.

Let us illustrate this with a little story. A student, say, of mathematics at. M. I. T., John, is going

on

a vacation trip to Europe, all alone. While he steps on board the Queen Mary he says to himself,

“I‟m

going to have a good time.” While he thinks this, he has nothing in his mind but a mathematical

curve, a kind of sinus curve, belonging to the concept “girl.” He does not think of any girl in

particular, but so to speak, of the principle of feminity. This is systemic valuation, construction

in

the mind. He sets up an ideal of some kind. The next day out on board there‟s a little party, quite

formal as it is on European ships. The boys line up on one side of the room, the girls on the other

side. John is standing there, and over there are samples of the class of girls, in space and time.

Now

the concept has enriched itself. It is not just a mathematical curve but quite a bit more - the curve

has

been filled in, from a sinus it has become sinuous. In looking over there he uses the concept in

his

mind, “girl,” with those new properties, to measure what is standing over there, the sample of the

class - he weighs in his mind the members of the class in the light of the concept - and the word

“axios” is our word “axle, “ meaning the axle of a scale. The process of weighing is reflected in

his

face. Looking over one he says, “Uh Uh”‟ and on another “Mmm” and on a third “Ah!” meaning

“p

properties.” He walks over, asks her to dance, and the dancing itself is a continuation of the

process

of valuation. He weighs what he has in his arms against what he has in his mind. Let us say he

likes

her; let us call her Mary. They keep company and they do have a wonderful time. Extrinsic

valuation

- she is the best girl on board in the axiological sense.

One day before the ship arrives in Southampton there happens a most peculiar and you might say

irrational and intangible thing, were it not for axiology. He wakes up in the morning and

suddenly

he thinks, “Mary - she‟s not a girl‟ at all, she‟s the only girl in the world.” He knows very well

there

are one thousand million girls in the world, and yet he knows with equal certainty that she is the

only

girl in the world. So, being a mathematician and very logical, he reasons, “If she is the only girl

in

the world and. I‟m a man, and I have to live with a girl, then I have to live with her.” So he

writes

her a letter, which starts as if he had read axiology: “My one and only.” Uniqueness! And the

language of the letter is as foreign to mathematics as poetry: “My treasure,” “My world,” “Sun of

my

life,” and the like. And he adds a “P. S. If you don‟t marry me, I‟ll jump overboard.”

What has happened? Systemic, extrinsic, and now intrinsic valuation. In intrinsic valuation, since

you do not abstract nor construct, how do you know? By self-identification. He identifies himself

with her.

They marry and after three months or three years the process goes in reverse. He walks down

Main

Street and suddenly he sees, “Ah, there are girls.” And then he compares Mary with them;

extrinsic

valuation. Then he goes home and there comes systemic valuation. He sees her as his

housekeeper,

the soup isn‟t ready, the meat is tough, the shirts are not washed, she gets his papers in disorder,

she

pushes the toothpaste tube at the wrong end, and he gets mad. He shouts at her, “I‟m working all

day

and the soup isn‟t. ready,” and she cries and she says, “Now you‟ re not nice to me,” and he

looks

at her and there she is again, the one and only girl in the world, and he goes over and says, “I‟m

so

sorry, I measured you systemically.” And she says, “Yes, you were very bad. I am unique. I am

to

be measured intrinsically. I am I.

So they continue deepening their experience of love; and, as we have seen, they can do so

infinitely,

plumbing ever deeper resources of.feeling and dedication, discovering ever new layers of

infinity.

Thus, in experience, intrinsic value is not the highest possible. Just as intrinsic value is to

extrinsic

value as ?1 is to ?0, so the next higher value after the intrinsic, ?2, will be to intrinsic value as

intrinsic value is to extrinsic value - infinitely higher. And there is no end to the height of values

as

there is none to the series of alefs. After ?2 follows ?3, after ?3, ?4, and so on ad infinitum, to ?n

and on to ??, and on. The totality of the alefs is an infinite series of infinities. Cantor called it

“The

Absolute” and held it to be the symbol of God. Again, he was right. When one analyzes the

series

of alefs in their totality one finds that it has all the properties which theology conn:ects with the

name

of God.

Now, finally, we are ready to find out what exponentiation with alef means. Again, let us

remember

the nature of value. If we have any given set of properties, n, then any sub-set of this set is a

value

of the set. If I have a chair with four properties, then any sub-set of 4, say 3 properties, is a value

of

that chair.‟ The given set of properties itself is, mathematically, a sub-set of itself. This given set,

seen as a sub-set, is the value good. If the chair has all its four properties it is a good chair. The

other

sub-sets are the other values, so-so, fair, bad, etc. Thus,.our first rule is:

1. Any sub-set of a given set of properties is a value of the given set.

As we have seen, there is a definite number of all possible sub-sets of a set, and hence a definite

total

value of a given set. If the number of properties in the given set is p, then the total value of that

set

is 2P - 1. Hence the second rule:

2. The totality of sub-sets of a given set of properties is the total value of the given set.

This total value of a set is, to repeat, 2P - 1. Now, suppose the given set of properties is infinite

rather

than finite, the number of properties in the given-sets possible set is ?0 rather than p. Then the

total

number of sub-sets possible is 2?0 and this is equal to ?1. The latter, ?1, is, then, the total value

of

the set ?0. In general,

3 A succeeding infinite value is the total value of the preceding infinite value.

If the preceding value is an infinity ?n, then its total value is an infinity ?n + 1.

This is no mere game, it is an ordering, of actual experience. As said before, in the Harvard study

on

expanded consciousness, subjects experienced infinities heaped upon infinities. They found, on

progressing from one infinity to the next, that the previous infinity was really limited and thus,

although an infinity, was a limited infinity. There is no other way to order these experiences than

through the Cantorian numbers. Thus, subjects experience the entire world, with its infinity of

events,

actions, things, etc., and then rise to a higher state of awareness, where the whole world shrinks

and

a new world infinitely richer than the one just left opens up to the marvelling consciousness. One

subject experienced the totality of all works of art, tons and tons of sculpture, acres and acres of

paintings, miles and miles of lace - only to see all this later from a distance as one great activity

of

a divine spirit. Unless one knows the hierarchy of alefs, such experiences are intolerable, for they

burst the limited human frame. But once one knows this hierarchy one eagerly follows along the

even

richer experience, using the structure of the alefs as a line of support, as Jacob used the ladder

leading

up to heaven.

Since in infinity nothing is ever lost, and anything that happens is enrichment, leading up to

higher

infinities, the events of, and within, infinity , cannot be understood by the logic of the finite. The

Bible, which deals with the realm of the infinite, uses the logic of the infinite and expresses it in

the

language of the infinite.

The Language of the Infinite: The Bible

The Bible is written in the language of infinity. In general, when we speak of languages, we

think

of English, German, Spanish, and so on. But that is only, so to speak, the horizontal division of

languages; English, German, Spanish are languages spoken in certain regions of the globe.

These.

languages you learn and there are dictionaries for them: English-German, English-Spanish,

German-

Spanish, etc. They are the natural or social languages. But within every single one of these

languages

there is a vertical division of which we usually know little. Every one of these languages has

within

it three entirely different languages, which correspond to the three levels of value. On the level of

systemic value there is the technical language - technical English, technical German, technical

Spanish, and so on. Every science has its own technical language. There are engineering

dictionaries

English-German, there are electronic dictionaries Russian- English, and so on. We may know

English

perfectly and have no idea of its technical languages. As I said before, if I come to your

insurance

convention or you come to my philosophy convention we won‟t understand a word. We have

each

learned our own technical language, and that‟s all. With it we can communicate with our

colleagues

but with nobody else. The general means of communication is the social or everyday language.

This

is the second of the vertical layers of language, the language that corresponds to extrinsic value -

the

language of concepts, descriptions and abstractions, the language that we are speaking in social

intercourse and which I am speaking to you at this moment. When we mean a dictionary we

usually

mean a dictionary of the social language. Now, there is a third and entirely different language,

the

poetic or metaphorical language. A person may know the social or a technical language, and yet

not

know the poetic language of his language. (In Spanish the two meanings of “language” are

distinguished by different words. Language in.general and social language are called “lengua,”

or

tongue, while the specific technical and metaphorical languages are called “lenguaje”). On the

other

hand, a person may know the metaphorical or poetic language but not know a technical language

of

his language (tongue). The former is the case with me in English, the latter in German. I speak

English pretty well and I know its technical language of philosophy, but I don‟t understand

English

poetry. I can read an English poem but not understand it. I have to analyze the poem word for

word

before I understand it. German I learned as a kid but I left Germany, as I told you, very early,

when

I was 17. German poetry for me is pure delight. But, strangely enough, I cannot write philosophy

in

German because I learned it in English: Once when I signed a contract for a book in German, to

be

delivered at sulch and such a date, and when I started to write it, absolutely nothing happened in

my

head. I had to write it in English and then translate it into German. And it came out pretty well.

But,

I can make poems in German which people find quite beautiful.

The technical, the social, and the poetic languages are then entirely different languages,

lenguajies,

within one and the same tongue, lengua. What interests us is the poetic language. It is the

language

of intrinsic value; and its vehicle is the metaphor.

What is a metaphor? A metaphor is a word of the social language which means anything but

what

it means. It is a word that may mean any other word of the social language. For example, there is

a

word in the English language which means anything except what it means, the word “peach.”

This

is a peach of an ash tray, she‟s a peach of a girl, that‟s a peach of a dog. The word “peach” in

these

metaphors means anything except peach, for you don‟t mean that a peach of a girl is hanging on

a

tree and is to be sold in the grocery store. Of course, I can speak of a “peach of a peach,” but

here

only the second “peach” is the social or natural word, meaning “the fruit of the peach tree.” The

first

is the metaphorical, use, meaning “the fullness of peach qualities.” A peach of a peach is an

extremely peachy peach - a peach having all the peach properties, and then some. Thus, the

metaphorical use is the word as pure concept, as a set of properties - and this set can be

transferred

(“metaphor” means “transfer”) to characterize any other thing. It then either values or disvalues

that

thing. Any word in the language can be used like this, as a pure set of properties - and we

remember

that valuation is a game with sets of properties. I can speak of a peach of a dog, but I can also

speak

of a dog of a peach. There ought to be metaphorical dictionaries, but there are none. There are

books

of quotations, such as Bartlett‟s or Stevenson‟s. In these books you find some of the infinite

manifold

of meanings that words can have; look up, for example, the word “rose” and see to how many

things

that word is applied. A metaphorical dictionary would give equivalent metaphorical meanings of

social words. Thus, in Spanish you cannot say “a peach of a girl.” “Un durazno de una mujer”

wouldn‟t mean a thing - it would come out a lemon. In Mexico a peach of a girl is a “mango de

una

mujer”. If you know what a mango is, you will find this quite adequate. A mango is a delicious

dish.

The mango of a girl is not the fruit that you buy in the market, or eat by sticking a fork into both

ends. It is a metaphorical use of “mango.”

Through metaphor you can express an infinity of things in an infinite manner of ways.

Metaphorical

language is the language of infinity. It is the language of the Bible.

Before we analyze the Bible with the help of the logic of metaphoric language let us summarize.

We

have the horizontal division of tongues; and we have the vertical division of technical, social,

and

poetic languages. To take an example in all three languages, let us use the word “apple.” This is

the

social word for a certain fruit in English, bought and sold in the market. Botanists don‟t call

apples

“apples,” they call them malus pyrus. At a botanical convention to speak of apples would be

unprofessional and dilettante. Malus Pyrus is the minimum set of properties without which no

apple

is an apple. It is the technical name for “apple.” There is also a metaphorical name for apple. It is

“the

fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” As you remember, that was an apple. But no

theologian would speak of apples at a theological convention. He would speak of the fruit of the

tree

of the knowledge of good and evil. In the middle ages, Eve was called bad because she gave

Adam

the apple, and apple in Latin is malus which, by accident, is also the word for bad. The three

meanings of “apple” are entirely different and can hardly be confused. Imagine a botanist going

into

a store and saying, “I want half a pound of malus pyrus. The grocer will say, “We haven‟t got

that

thing.” “Oh, yes,” says the botanist, “There it is.” “Oh, no,” says the grocer, “These are apples.”

“Well, that‟s what I was talking about,” says the botanist, and the grocer will think he is nuts. Or

suppose the theologian goes to the grocer and says, “I want half a pound of the fruit of the tree of

the

knowledge of good and evil.” Well, the grocer will throw him out. Or suppose at a theological

convention they say, “Eve gave Adam malus pyrus.” Or that at a botanical convention they speak

of

the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. All these would be transpositions of

concepts

that belong to different languages. These languages can be shown diagrammatically as follows:

LANGUAGES TONGUES

(Lenguajes) (Lenguas)

English Spanish German Etc.

Technical Malus Pyrus Malus Pyrus Malus Pyrus Malus Pyrus

Social Apple Manzana Apfel -----

Metaphorical,

Poetic The fruit of the

tree of the

knowledge of

good and evil Le fruta del

arbor Die Frucht des

Baumes -----

As is seen, the technical language is universal, and that is one of the reasons for its existence .

The

word “apple,” of course, has many more metaphorical uses than “the fruit of the tree of the

knowledge of good and evil.” This is only one of the infinitely many meanings “apple” can have

as

a metaphor. Looking into a dictionary of quotations, we find that apples can also be: swimmers,

quenching the flame of Venus, bittersweet with the moral of time‟s vicissitude, a womanis blush,

love-apples that bloom in thy eyes, causes, rotten at the heart, ashes, in her skirt, of gold, of

silver,

on the Dead Sea‟s shore, etc.

Now let us see what makes metaphor the language of infinity - and indeed of the non-

denumerable

infinity, the continuum, ?1. A metaphor, we saw, is a word of the social language that can mean

any

other word of that, language. Thus, we have the words of the social language: word a, word b,

word

c, and so on. How many words are there? An infinite number of words, if we think of all the

words

of all languages ever spoken or to be spoken, ?0. As a metaphor every word may mean every

other

word. The word a may mean the word b, or the word c, or the word d, or the word n, ad

infinitum.

But b also may mean any other word, a and c and d and n, and so on ad infinitum. An infinity of

words may each mean an infinity of words .Or, to put it differently, any one of an infinity of

words

may be combined with an infinity of words in an infinite number of combinations. All such

combinations are metaphors. They are also sub-sets of the denurnerably infinite set of the words

of

the social language. Since there are ?0 such words, and every metaphor is a sub-set of this set,

the

total of such sub-sets or metaphors is 2?0 which is ?1.

WORDS OF SOCIAL LANGUAGE

a b c n ?0

bcd n

cbd n

dbc n

ebc n

Metaphorical

Meanings

2?0

permutations

?1 +

acd n

cad n

dac n

eac n

Metaphorical

Meanings

2?0

permutations

?1 +

Metaphorical

Meanings

?1 +

Metaphorical

Meanings

?1 +

Metaphorical

Meanings

?1

There are infinitely many more metaphors, name ?1 metaphors, in the poetic language than there

are

words in the social language (?0). While the words in the social language are denumerable, those

in

the poetic language are non-denumerable. This language is one great continuum. It is an infinite

web

of infinite meanings. This is the reason why a true poem is inexhaustible and why there are still

interpretations written of Homer and Dante - and exegeses of the Bible.

The Bible is not written in social language; nor is it written in technical language. It is written in

metaphorical language, in poetic language.

The Elements of the Bible

The reason is that the Bible deals with infinity, and only the language of infinity can do justice to

infinity. There are at least two infinities in the Bible. The first is the infinity of the Spirit, of the

Kingdom of God, of God. The second is the infinity of the world. The world consists of an

infinity

of items which constitute the inventory of the universe. This infinity is denumerable, for one can,

theoretically, count all the items and their properties. The spirit continuum is non-denumerable, it

is the infinity beyond the infinity of the world. The world and the spirit are to each other as a

denumerable infinity ?0 is to a non-denumerable infinity ?1. This means the following.

The cardinality of the world and its inventory is that of the denumerable infinity of the series

of.integers, fractions, and irrational numbers, such as 2 . Between any two integers or natural

numbers, 1 and 2, 2 and 3, etc., one can insert an infinity of fractions. Between any two fractions

one

can insert an infinity of additional fractions, and between any two of the latter one can insert still

another infinity of irrational numbers. Yet, although the series of cardinality ?0 becomes thus

more

and more dense, like a series of dots between which are inserted other dots and between these

again

other dots ad infinitum. Yet, no matter how many dots I insert between any two dots, the series

of

dots will never become a line but always remain a series of dots, no matter how densely packed.

All

I need is a powerful microscope to see that I still have a series of dots and no continuous line.

The

dots remain countable, denumerable. And no matter how close they are together, there are

between

them infinitely many holes which are filled out by the line itself. Into these holes fit the trans-

cendental numbers, such as ?, whose series is non-denumerable. The continuum, then, of the

transcendental numbers seeps through even the closest pores of the series of the integers,

fractions

and irrational numbers. Thus, if the space-time universe repiresents a denumerable infinity and

the

spirit represents a non-denumerable one, the world is to the spirit as a series of dots is to a line.

This

means that the spirit seeps through even the densest pores of space-time existence and is “within

us.”

The whole space-time existence is suffused by the continuum of the spirit.

All we need to do, therefore, is to open ourselves up to the spirit. Once we do, the spirit will flow

into and through us. Experiences as the ones of love and friendship, which are outside of space

and

time, are small openings which we have allowed ourselves, small break-throughs from the world

of

the senses to that of the spirit. They are rare and short-lived. Usually we are clammed up, dense

as

well as tense. Yet, no matter how dense we seem to be, the continuum of the spirit surrounds us

and

will flow into us; for even at our densest we are still porous, just as the ever so densely packed

series

of fractions is porous with respect to the transcendental continuum.

It is thus more than an analogy to liken the relationship between God and the world to the

relationship between a transcendental continuum (or a non-denumerable infinity) and a

denumerable

infinity, to the relationship between ?1 and ?0. Rather there is an identity of form, an

isomorphism

between what theology teaches us the relation between God and the world and what Georg

Cantor

teaches as the relation between levels of infinity. Cantor was quite clear about this isomorphism;

and

so were other mathematicians, such as Dedekind, and philosophers, such as Josiah Royce.

God and the world are two of the elements of the Bible. As man is created in the image of God,

so

God appears in the image of man. The logical structure of, the spiritual world is similar to the

logical

structure of man. The logical structure of man was the following.

“I”

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Me at Birth Me Now Me at Death

“I” is the concept which pulls together all the stages of me into one unity. It brings about my

identity

throughout the changes of space-time existence. As we have seen, in the Proof from Infinite

Regress,

there are infinite levels within the I. These levels can deepen themselves infinitely; so that the

cardinality of properties within the “I”, the depth of self-consciousness, can go on from

denumerable

to non-denumerable infinity and beyond, from ?0 to ?1 and beyond. The sequence of me‟s, on

the

other hand, is always denumerable, ?0.

The relation between God and the world is identical in form to tho relation between I and me.

God

is the concept that pulls the infinite stages of the spacetime world together and gives this world

unity

and self-identity. God is infinite depth of properties, an infinity infinitely remote from all human

understanding. In God there are, in infinite depth, all the properties of Faith, but Faith directed

toward His creation and not, as man‟s, toward his creator. God is infinitely good, in the moral

and

spiritual sense, as well as in the logical sense. His goodness in the moral sense makes him a

Person;

His goodness in the logical sense makes him the source of the world‟s goodness, the value

predicate

of the world. When the world fulfills its goodness, then this goodness is not a predicate of the

world

but a predicate of all the predicates of the world; and as the world progressively becomes richer

and

richer in predicates, so the predicate “goodness” becomes increasingly richer. This means that

the

world infinitely approaches this goodness, that is, God. God is, potentially, the world‟s self-

fulfillment. As the world becomes morally and spiritually better, ever more transparent to its own

self, it becomes more and more God-like. The world is, so to speak, God‟s body and mind, and

God

is the world‟s Self. Thus, in the degree that the world improves and enriches itself, it improves

and

enriches God‟s creation and thus confirms God‟s own goodness and mastery - his sovereignty

over

creation. In the degree that the world degenerates, impoverishes, and confuses itself, it lets down

God

and makes a mockery of His goodness and mastery - of His sovereignty. False Gods and idols

then

assume sovereignty over man‟s affairs. The world, in other words, has a responsibility toward

God -

it must knock and then God will open Himself to it. It must prove itself. Peace is not promised to

all

men but only to men of good will. Only in the advance toward God can the world live in the

fullness

of its own Self. Any other way leads to disaster. As long as the world does not follow the, road to

its self-fulfillment, toward God, the world is alienated both from itself and from God - just as a

person going astray is alienated from his own Self. And such self-alienation leads to self-

destruction.

The definition of the world-in-God is God‟s own definition of Himself: “I am I” But the world

alientated from itself, that is from God, has the definition of the schizophrenic: “I am not I “ And

in

the fulfillment of this definition there must come the day when it will not be.

The world is the second element of the Bible. It is the infinite welter of things and events in

space

and time. It gets its meaning by the comprehensive force of the concept that.pulls it together,

God.

It must, in order to fulfill itself, aspire closer and closer to the goodness which is God. The total

goodness in the world, the maximum possible richness of qualities, can be reached in the world

only

by man. A man who within himself succeeds in deepening his consciousness, his awareness to

infinite depth, who encompasses within his spirit the whole world and approaches to the richness

of

God, such a man would be a Saint, and a Saint of Saints. He would be the prototypal person

whom

every other person in creation would have to emulate. This prototypal person in the Bible is

Jesus,

the Christ, the Saviour. Salvation means, as we have seen, “lifting up to a higher level of

meaning,”

making more complete. Jesus is “salvus.”God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten

Son,

that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3: 16) - that

the

man of faith should be lifted up from the level of the perishable, the earth, to the level of eternal

meaning. “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world

through

him might be saved” (John 3:17). Jesus‟is he who came so that we may live, in the full sense of

this

word, in infinite awareness. He is the third element of the Bible. He is the second person of the

Trinity. He represents God within the world, and the world before God. He is the mediator

between

us and God. We can only understand Jesus if we have a living relationship to him, as if he were

walking at our side, the eternal contemporary, as Kierkegaard calls him. We need him, for

without

him the chasm between us and God would be unbridgeable.

The fourth element of the Bible is the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. The holy spirit

corresponds to the symbolic nature of man when he has made himself transparent to himself,

when

his Self uses his body and mind as a symbol for a higher meaning. He corresponds to man‟s self-

transcendence. The Holy Spirit is the Word, the Logos, not made incarnate as in Jesus, but as

word,

speaking of God to man. He is the one whom Jesus said the Father would send us, the Comforter

who would teach us anew all that Jesus had said and which the world did not understand. He is

the

one who will make understandable the Gospel and, at last, make it lived by men. He is the ever

continuing effort of men of good will to clarify the gospel of Jesus.

These then are the four elements of the Bible: God, the World, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, all four

corresponding to similar features within the structure of men. We could have added a fifth

element,

the Devil, the all-destroyer, the dia-bolus who is at cross-purposes with creation, but we shall

limit

ourselves to the four elements, and among them to the person of Jesus Christ who has clarified

for

us, with the help of the Holy Spirit, the structure of Infinity.

The Juxtaposition of the Finite and the Infinite

The parables of Jesus are situations of infinity. Infinity is called, by Jesus, the Kingdom of God.

The

parables articulate for us the features of the Kingdom of God. They elaborate the nature of

infinity.

They give details of a realm where there is no space and no time, and where the part equals the

whole. They are expressed in the languages of infinity, the language of metaphor. Each parable is

a

metaphor. Its words are those of the everyday social language and of everyday social situations;

but

their meanings have nothing to do with the everyday world and its situations. They mean the

world

of the spirit, the realm of the infinite. They use finite terms to speak of the infinite. Once we

understand this language we understand the message of the parables.

This message Jesus has put in pithy words, as the moral of all his teaching. When Peter asked

him

why he spoke in parables, Jesus answered that if he did not speak in parables nobody would

understand him. So at least the disciples understood him, for: “Whosoever hath, to him shall be

given, and he shall have more abundance: - But whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken

away

even that he hath” (Matt. 13:12). This is the moral of the parables. What does it mean? You

cannot

make sense out of it by using the logic of the finite. He who hath to him shall be given and he

shall

have in abundance. In finite language, that would mean that Rockefeller will go to the Kingdom

of

Heaven. The more money you have, the more you make. And the beggar, to hell with him - he

who

has not, from him shall be. taken even that he hath. Is that what Jesus means? Obviously not.

For,

he says, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to

Heaven.

Or, when the rich young man asks him, Master, I want to follow you, what shall I do? Jesus

answers:

Very simple, sell everything you have and follow me. What then does Jesus mean? What is it

that

one should have in order to have ever more and which, if one lacks it, will one lose everything?

It

is, of course, the infinite spirit.

The parables give us the logic of the infinite. In the infinite, whatever happens is addition; for

subtraction is impossible, whatever you subtract from an infinity leaves an infinity. He who has

the

infinite spirit will have ever more spirit and he shall have in abundance. But he who has not of

the

spirit what does he have? He may have the treasure of the world, but he will lose it all, of course,

because he cannot take it with him. There was once a cartoon in the New Yorker, a magnificent

hearse and behind it an armored car with guards beside it and the caption, “Who says you cannot

take

it with you?” Well, you can‟t.

Once you know the language of infinity, what Jesus says becomes crystal-clear. Of course, one

must

pay close attention to the text. I have never been satisfied with what I read of Bible exegesis.

Thus,

in the splendidly printed Interpreter‟s Bible we read this as the meaning of Matt. 13:12: “The

spiritually receptive will get more and more, while others will become more stupid.” Or: “The

more

generous you are (in almsgiving or in teaching), the more you will ultimately possess.” This is

quite

true: but it is only a part of the parable‟s meaning, or of the essence of that meaning. It gives

examples of that meaning but not the meaning itself. It is like George E. Moore‟s naturalistic

fallacy;

it takes the species for the genus. Once one knows the general meaning of the parables one can

then

deduce specific meanings, such as the meanings of almsgiving, teaching, etc. But it is logically

fallacious to try to explain the general meaning by giving examples of it. This is like explaining

the

meaning of fruit by saying it is an orange. The general meaning is that he who has of the infinite

spirit will have evermore of it and he who has not will lose even that he has. The latter is not one

who has a little spirit and will become “more stupid” - one cannot have “a little” spirit, as one

cannot

be “a little” pregnant. The text says clearly: “Whosoever hath not.” Such a person has no spirit.

So,

what does he have? Nonspiritual, terrestrial knowledge and goods. “Spirit,” in this passage

means

“knowing the secrets of the Kingdom of heaven,” for this is which is given to him who hath; and

which is not given to him who hath not. Jesus‟ entire answer to Peter is: “Because it is given unto

you to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven but to them it is not given. For, whosoever

hath,

to him shall be given, and he shall have in abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be

taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables because seeing they see not

and

hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.” Spiritual understanding is given to them who

have, and more and deeper such understanding will be given to them. And spiritual

understanding

is not given to the others - seeing they see not, hearing they bear not - and what they do have,

terrestrial understanding and goods, will be taken away from them, for at death they lose both

their

intellectual and their worldly powers.

The gospel itself makes very clear the differences between the finite and the infinite, between

social

and metaphorical language. It does so in sometimes comical juxtapositions of the two, I have

already

mentioned the conversation with Nicodemus. Jesus says to him: “Unless a man be born again he

cannot see the kingdom of God,” and Nicodemus answers: “How can a man be born when he is

old?

Can he enter the second time into his Mother‟ s womb?” (John 3:3-4). Jesus uses the word

“born”

metaphorically, he means a spiritual birth. Nicodemus does not understand the word as a

metaphor

but takes it literally, as the physiological and social process, the birth of the flesh. Jesus is not

concerned with this. The flesh and the spirit, the social and the moral individual, are entirely

different

dimensions; in our terminology, they are those of extrinsic and of intrinsic value, respectively.

Each

dimension has its process of “birth,” but “birth” in one is an entirely different thing from “birth”

in

the other: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”

(John

3:6). This difference has been made clear by a modern philosopher, Nicolas Berdyaev, in Slavery

and

Freedom: “Personality is an axiological category, a category of value.... The entire world is

nothing

in comparison with human personality, with the unique person of man.” Man as personality, as

intrinsic value, is in a dimension which inakes him not more valuable - for the intrinsic value is

not

comparable - but incomparably valuable in comparison to the whole extrinsic world, the physical

universe. This world is nothing compared to the intrinsic value of one person. This is the same

thought expressed in different words by Pico, Pascal, Bergson, and others; quantitatively man is

a

minute Particle in the universe, qualitatively he incomparably exceeds the whole universe. “If

man

were not a person then he would be like other things in the world and there would be nothing

unusual

about him. But personality in man is evidence of this, that the world is not self-sufficient, that it

can

be overcome and surmounted. Personality is like nothing else in the world, there is nothing with

which it can be compared, nothing which can be placed on a level with it. When a person enters

the

world, a unique and unrepeatable personality, then the world process is broken into and

compelled

to change its course, in spite of the fact that outwardly there is no sign of this....”

Berdyaev contrasts the intrinsic value with the extrinsic value of man, calling the intrinsic

personality

and the extrinsic individual.“Personality is not a biological or a psychological category, but an

ethical

and spiritual one.... Personality is not a part of society, as it is not part of a race.... Only an

existential

philosophy, and not a sociological or a biological one, can construe the true doctrine of man as

personality.... The individual is a category of naturalism, biology, and sociology.... The

individual,

is closely linked with the material world; he is brought to birth by the generic process. The

individual

is born of a father and a mother, he has a biological origin, which is determined by family

heredity

and also by social heredity. There is no individual without the family and no family without the

individual. The individual is found entirely within categories which distinguish what belongs to

the

species from what is of the individual. The individual carries on a struggle for existence in the

family, the. biological and the social processes. Man certainly is an individual, but he is not only

an

individual.... Man is also personality. The idea of man, his vocation in the world are bound up

with

his personality. And here everything is changed. Personality is not a naturalistic but a spiritual

category. Personality is not born of the family and cosmic process, not born of a father and a

mother,

it emanates from God, it makes its appearance from another world. It bears witness to the fact

that

man is the point of intersection of two worlds, that in him the re takes place the conflict between

spirit and nature e, f freedom and necessity, independence and dependence. Everything that is

personal in man is set in opposition to any kind of automatism which plays such a part in human

life,

automatism both physical and social. There are not two separate men, but one and the same man

is

both an individual and a personality. That is, not two different beings, but two kinds of

qualitativeness. In other words, two kinds of value.

The most explicit passage in which the Gospel juxtaposes these two kinds of values and their

respective languages is in the conversation between Jesus and the woman of Samaria. The

metaphor

here used and misunderstood by the one Jesus talks to is that of “water.” “Water” for Jesus is a

metaphor for “spirit.” Again, he uses a word of the natural world to describe a feature of the

Kingdom of Heaven. No wonder the woman misunderstands him. But the comical thing is that

after

the woman has seen her error and comes to understand the metaphor the disciples come back

from

shopping, and make the very same error, now with reference to the word “meat.” Let us read the

passage (John 4:7-39):

There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink.

(For His disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.) Then saith the woman of

Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew asketh drink of me, which am a woman

of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.

Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith

to

thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee

living water.

The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from

whence then has thou that living water?

Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself,

and his children and his cattle?

Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:

But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water

that

I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. The woman

saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.

Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither.

The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well

said,

I have no husband:

For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband; in that

saidst thou truly.

The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet.

Our fathers worshiped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where

men

ought to worship.

Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this

mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.

Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.

But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in

spirit

and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.

God is a Spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

The woman saith unto him, I know that Messiah cometh, which is called Christ: when he

is

come, he will tell us all things.

Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he.

And upon this came His disciples, and marveled that he talked with the woman: yet no

man

said, What seekest thou? or, Why talkest thou with her?

The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men,

Come see a man, which t~ld me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?

Then they went out of the city, and came unto Him.

In the meanwhile his disciples prayed him, saying Master, eat.

But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of.

Therefore said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought him ought to eat?

Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his

work.

Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you,

Lift

up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.

And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal, that both he that

soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together.

And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth.

I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour; other men laboured, and ye are

entered into their labours.

And many of the Samaritans, of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman,

which

testified, He told me all that ever I did.

In this story we see the characteristic difference between extrinsic and intrinsic language, and the

sometimes comical transpositions between them. “Jesus saith unto her” - already this is an act of

intrinsic valuation. Usually, Samaritans are not spoken to by Jews; the individual Samaritan is

never

valued as a person but always as a member of the class of Samaritans. But Jesus speaks to the

woman, not as a Samaritan, but as a woman and, indeed, as this particular woman, as will

become

clearer at the end, He speaks to. her in everyday language, but in an intrinsic meaning, that is, he

speaks metaphorically: “Give me to drink.”

The woman answers correctly to the act of intrinsic valuation, but not to the intrinsic language,

which

she does not understand and takes at face value, extrinsically. “How is it that thou being a Jew,

asketh drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews have no dealings with the

Samaritans.” Jesus answers by showing her the intrinsic meaning of what he said: “If thou

knewest

the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink: thou wouldest have asked of

Him,

and he would have given thee living water.” Both he and the woman are in the realm of value,

and

she could have asked of him as well as he of her. The water he wants in communion with her is

not

empirical water but living spirit. She does not understand and applies the language of the world.

to

his metaphor: .”Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with and the well is deep...” Jesus continues to

make

clear the two kinds of value: “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever

drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.” Thirst is of the body, of the

empirical

world, where there is space and time and hence subtraction and longing for satisfaction. In the

kingdom of intrinsic value, there is no space and time, everything is added unto us, and all are in

creative unity: “The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into

everlasting life.”

The woman begins to understand vaguely. She asks for this water. Jesus counters by drawing

attention to her own life situation, and connecting the living spirit of this water with her life, and

the

value in it. “Go, call thy husband and come. hither.” To have a husband and love him is intrinsic

value and belongs to the realm of the living water. But the woman has no one husband; she has

five

“husbands” - Jesus brings home to her the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic valuation.

“Thou

hast well said, I have no husband; For thou hast had five husbands.” Husband is an intrinsic term

and

refers to one and only one in a life time. “And he whom thou now hast is not thy husband; in that

saidst thou truly.”

The woman now begins really to understand, but she understands in her own primitive way. The

man

who speaks intrinsic value is something outside her own world, and all she knows of such a man

is

that he is a prophet. The prophet worships at a certain place and time. But Jesus makes clear that

God

is not of this world but within us and may be worshiped accordingly; “But the hour cometh and

now

is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.- for the Father seeketh

such to worship him. - God is a Spirit; and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and

in truth.

Now. the woman divines the whole truth; she calls him the Messiah, and Jesus confirms it.

At this moment the disciples return from the city where they had bought meat; and how the

whole

theme of the conversation is repeated in a different key. The disciples wonder why he spoke to

the

woman but say nothing. Finally, one of them asks him to eat, and now Jesus repeats the

metaphorical

game: “I have meat to eat that ye know not of.” The disciples, as the woman before them, take

the

intrinsic meaning for the extrinsic: “Hath any man brought him ought to eat?” And now Jesus

makes

his whole meaning clear using not only the metaphor of meat but of anything that grows and is

created: seed, harvest, fruit, wages - recurring themes of the parables.

The Samaritans, however, begin to believe in him because he had intrinsically valued the woman

by

giving her his love, and giving it to her the way she was: “He told me all that I ever did.”

With respect to understanding the Bible we are a little like Nicodemus and the woman of

Samaria

and, for that matter, the disciples in the beginning of their divine career. We take it literally and

thus

don‟t understand it - seeing we see not, hearing we hear not. Our spiritual understanding is still

rather

inarticulate. We are not poetic.

I have met people who told me they had read Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak and found it a

bore.

They have not understood it. The novel is one great metaphor about the Spirit, and the main

metaphor used is that of “water” - “water” meaning “eternal life.” The title itself is metaphorical.

“Zhivoy” in Russian means “alive,” “living,” from “zhizn,” “life,”and Zhivago means he who

has

eternal life, he who survives forever. The book is about human life, about death and resurrection.

Edmund Wilson, in his fascinating essay in the New Yorker of November 15, 1958, calls it “a

kind

of religious parable.” And that is exactly what it is. It shows the life of the spirit against the

system

of bureaucrats and revolutionaries - petty revolutionaries of earthly circumstances. I believe men

like

Berdyaev and Pasternak are more representative of the Russian people than the mouthpieces of

the

Communist Party. But we can understand those great spirits - as any great spirit - only when we

get

used to the metaphorical, the poetic meaning of everyday words.

There is in the Gospel another, more subtle and more fundamental juxtaposition of the finite and

the

infinite, not in language but in substance. This is the juxtaposition of good and evil. Jesus‟

sayings

about good and evil are as puzzling as his other “secrets of the Kingdom of God.” They have not

been understood, much to the detriment of our world. The Good, morally, is your infinite depth

our

infinitely being ourselves. Not to be infinitely yourself but living in the world is evil - morally

bad:

Jesus states the relation between Good and Evil world is in what we may call his third Great

Commandment: “Resist not evil” (Matt. 5:39) or, in Paul‟s formulation: “Overcorne evil by

good”

(Rom. 12:21). Jesus illustrates this Commandment by some curious examples: “Whosoever shall

smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” I once heard a sermon in Texas where

the

preacher said: “The way Jesus meant this is that when someone smacks you on one cheek turn to

him

the other cheek to see exactly how he did it, and smack him back.” This is not Jesus‟ meaning.

He

meant what he said: Offer the other cheek for him to smite it too. This, Jesus implies, will take

the

wind. out of the sail of the other‟s anger, for there is no greater incentive for evil than. resistance

to

it. If you do not resist evil, much of the fun of evil goes out of it. In the German concentration

camps

not to show fear and pain under torture was regarded an insult against the torturer. There is

nothing

worse for evil than have it run in open doors. There is nothing more disconcerting for a ruffian

than

being polite to him. “If any man will sue thee at the law, and take thy coat, let him have thy cloke

also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.” What does it all mean?

It means we should overcome the finite by the infinite. We should overcome the logic of finite

thinking with the logic of infinite thinking. We should lift what is evil up to a higher level of

meaning. We should save the evildoer and show him, by our example, the spirit of the Kingdom

of

God. Here, as in Maslow‟s peak. experience, polarities, dichotomies, conflicts are resolved in a

higher meaning.

How can it be done? Very simply, if you know the trick. Take Abraham Lincoln. When

somebody

reproached him saying, “Why are you so kind to your. enemies, why don‟t you annihilate them?”

Abraham Lincoln said; “Don‟t I annihilate my enemies by making friends out of them?” There

was

once a cartoon in Esquire. Two cavemen in their bear skins, leaning on their big clubs, looking

on

in amazement at a third, grinning happily, bouncing along with a little flower bouquet in his

hand.

The caption: “Boys, I‟ve revolutionized love.” Instead of bashing in the “head of the competitor

he

wins the heart of the girl. Another, example, the philosopher Immanuel Kant, a little fellow of 5

feet,

was walking on the walls of the city of Konigsberg when there came toward him a huge guy 6

feet

tall, a butcher with an apron and a big knife, ready to slaughter the little philosopher. Immanuel

Kant

looks up to him‟ and says,“But my dear man, butchering day is Thursday, and today is Monday.”

“Oh, excuse me, said the big fellow.”

What is the trick? You have to find a logic that is different from that of the evildoer and which

includes both him and you as a common denominator. Since his logic is one of the finite where

the

part is smaller than the whole, and where part is opposed to part - namely he on the one side and

you

on the other - the surest way is to insert the logic of the infinite into the situation. This will let

him

save face and will both bring you over to his side and him to yours. The capacity to use this logic

seems to be inborn in people. I remember once my brother and I - he was in New York, I was in

Columbus - planned to meet at Niagara Falls with our families. My brother‟s boy was then about

11

or so and my boy about 13. My brother‟s boy was a very wild guy and my boy was very mild, a

real

little Buddha. He wouldn‟t hurt a fly. So, when my brother called me up at the meeting I

said,“Fine,”

and we made the date. But then suddenly remembered - my, God, that wild guy. What‟s going to

happen? And I-said to my brother, “What are we going to do? You know your boy, you know

my

boy. I mean before you know there‟ll be a huge fight and maybe my boy will be thrown into

Niagara.” “Well,” says my brother, “I have thought about that, but just let‟s see what happens.

After

all we have some strength left ourselves.” So, we met at Niagara - his family comes this way and

our

family comes that way. Hello - hello. And before you knew, we had hardly shaken hands, my

brother‟s boy kicks my boy in the shinbone. My boy crouches, hobbles along on the other leg,

and

cries, “Ouch, I‟m wounded.” And immediately that wise guy puts his arm around my boy‟s

shoulders

and says, “And I‟m the medic.” And they played wounded and medic in the best harmony, and

had

a wonderful time. The logic of the infinite, the brotherhood of man, it can be used if you know

how.

The most tremendous example of this is the following, a: true experience told me by a former

member of the German Embassy in Mexico City now in the Foreign Office in Bonn. When he

was

a young fellow he was at the battle of Stalingrad. The battle, as you know, went very bad for the

Germans. This fellow - he was about 19 years old then - lost everything he had, his gun, his

bayonet,

ammunition, even his coat, everything. He jumped into a shell hole and was sitting there,

shivering

in the winter - cold, the battle raging all around him when suddenly he sees a huge shadow and a

Russian with full equipment, machine gun, heavily dressed and equipped, jumps right upon him.

My

friend, Hans, looks up, all puzzled, and he told me, “Suddenly I saw myself alone in the whole of

creation with that crazy guy jumping upon me. I couldn‟t help it, but I laughed at him. And that

fellow, he looks at me, comes down, grins, puts his arm around me and by sign language we

agree

that he who loses the battle will be the other‟s prisoner.” A smile suddenly took away the whole

madness of the war. Since then I have heard similar examples from other theatres of war. Do you

know what dogs do when they are in real danger and are smaller than the other? They stretch out

on

their back, all four legs up - and the aggressor does nothing.

Evil is always a fragmentary, a defective action compared to the good. There is always a

possibility

for the good to absorb this action within itself. The only trick is to steep oneself in the logic of

the

infinite, to make, as Kierkegaard says of the Knight of Faith, at every moment, within the finite,

the

movements of the infinite. Many of us do this as a matter of course, as an innate ability, like my

boy.

It is a logic followed every day in all kinds of situations: by the mothers of the world when they

defy

the laws of arithmetic and love the second child just as much as the first, without for that matter

diminishing their love for the first child. They can love a dozen children, each one of them one

hundred percent, for their love grows with every child. It is the logic of the teacher who gains the

more he gives of his knowledge to his students, and whose greatest sorrow would be not to have

men

equalling him in understanding and inspiration. It is a logic of all places and all times. It is

practiced

by the African tribe that condemns a murderer to marry the widow of the murdered in order to

produce a life for the one he has taken, and by the Chinese restaurant owners who were ruining

each

other by competition in the same street, until they found the following ingenious solution: they

swapped management but retained ownership - cooperation by competition and competition by

cooperation. It is the logic of overcoming evil by good. To sum it all up in the words of a wit: “If

someone hands you a lemon, make lemonade.” It is in the last instance, nothing very mystical. It

is

plain common sense. For common sense is, precisely, to see the traces of the infinite in the finite

world.

The Structure of the Infinite: Jesus‟ Parables

A parable, I said, is a situation in infinity. It is a situation where there is no space and time, and

where

the part equals the whole. It is a tale where words of the social language of the finite world are

used

in a metaphorical sense iepicting the infinite. The moral of the parables is, “Whosoever hath to

him

shall be given and he shall have in abundance and he who hath not from him shall be taken even

that

he hath.” Every single Parable illustrates this moral. Let us begin with the Parable of the

Vineyard,

which shows so clearly that a situation of the spirit is not in space and not in time. You all know

this

Parable. The workers work in the vineyard, they work all day in the hot sun, twelve hours. The

master of the vineyard goes out from time to time - time to time - remember that -to the square

where

the loafers are lying in the sun. He goes to the men and says, “Why don‟t you work?” They say,

“Nobody has hired us.” So he hires them for work in the vineyard, and he does so all day long;

even

a few minutes before the end of the day he goes out and asks a few loafers to come in, They sit

around a little, doing a little work, and at last the bell rings and everybody goes to the cashier‟s

window; and the cashier gives everyone a dollar. Everyone, those who have worked ten minutes,

those who have worked 30 minutes, those who have worked an hour, those who have worked

two

hours, three hours, and those who have worked twelve hours in the hot sun. Those who have

worked

all that day get mad, of course, and say to the master of the vineyard, “Sir, that isn‟t fair. We

work

all day in the hot sun and get a dollar, and these loafers come in for ten minutes in the shade and

get

a dollar too.” Says the lord of the vineyard, “What‟s it to you? What have we agreed?” “Well,”

they

say, “a dollar.” “Did you get your dollar?” “Yes.” “Well, then, what do you want from me?

What‟s

it to you? Does it make you worse off that I am good? Many are called, few are chosen. The first

will

be last and the last will be first.”

What in the world does it mean? It looks unfair, And from the point of view of finite arithmetic it

is unfair, There isn‟t a business in the world that is constructed this way. But this is infinity

business -

this is the Kingdom of Heaven where is no space and there is no time. If there is no time, what

difference does it make how long a fellow has worked? Everybody is there in eternity. And one

eternity is as eternal as another eternity, and the so-called 10-minute eternity is as eternal as the

so-

called l2-hour eternity; there are neither minutes nor hours. And.there is no space either. If there

is

no space, then there is no separation because what separates you and me is the space between us.

If

there is no separation between you and me then there are no separate pockets. If there are no

separate

pockets what I have everybody has. And what I don‟t have nobody has. So it makes no

difference

who gets what. The dollar that goes to anyone goes to everyone. We are at the bottom of

ourselves

one cornmunity. All of us are one Self. So these people were foolish. They didn‟t understand the

logic of the infinite - what one has all have, what one has not none has. Every action is addition -

remember the alefs never change, they only build up. The goodness of the master to anyone

makes

all good and cannot possibly make anyone worse off - for in the Lord‟s grace to one all benefit;

he

who has received the grace will radiate to all. The last in the value scale on earth, the children,

the

poor, the meek and humble, they will be first in the Kingdom of Heaven; and the first on earth,

the

mighty, the rich, the powerful, the important, they will be last in the Kingdom of Heaven. For

many

are called but few are chosen: few succeed in sloughing off the empty idling of the world in

order

to be pure enough to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, the vineyard. But if they enter, they enter, no

matter when. It is only the if that counts, not the when.

For this reason, it was possible for the murderer, the bandit who was crucified with Jesus, to be

in

Paradise with him. In that last moment of his life he saw the whole of Life. He became eternal.

He-

saw his eternal guilt and repented. “Lord,” he said, “remember me when thou comest into thy

kingdom.” This repentance lifted him to the dimension of eternity and made good for the whole

of

his finite sin. The whole of finite life is really nothing but one moment in eternity. He who in the

last

moment repents is as good, and indeed is better, than he who has passed his whole life as a so-

called

good man who needs no repentiance. As we have seen, there is more joy in Heaven for one

sinner

who repenteth than for ninety-nine just men who do not need repentance. What does it mean? It

means that man may be moral and he may be immoral, but he must not be amoral, he must not

be

indifferent. Even if you do bad you make yourself sensitive to evil and in making yourself

sensitive

to evil you will eventually become sensitive to good - just as in being sensitive to good you will

eventually become sensitive to evil. Good and evil belong together, and sensitivity to one brings

about sensitivity to the other.

There was never a lovelier man than Mozart, but he fathomed the whole evilness of a fiend like

Don

Giovanni. Goethe said: “There is no crime that I could not have committed.” But he did not

commit

any; he wrote it in his dramas. So did Dostoyevski vicariously live the crimes and terrors of

conscience of his creatures. Since we were not good enough we were not bad enough to imagine

all

the horrors of Hitler‟s evilness. And because we did not, millions perished - unnecessarily. Thus,

the

road to the ethical goes either through moral evil or moral good, both consciously lived.

Repentance

is the way from evil to good, through the horrors of the soul to the depth of our own eternal

being.

It is a terrible road and a precarious one; but it is more certain of success than not living morally

at

all, amorally, indifferently. If you have conformed all your life, have never done anything

particularly

bad or anything particularly good, have lived according to the rules and customs, systemically

and

extrinsically, you will never even know what moral depth you have. You have never developed a

sensitivity for either good or evil. You were a social machine, and there cannot be much joy in

heaven for a zombie. In the words of Kierkegaard, the ethical choice is a choice for both good

and

evil, for the whole dimension of the ethical, both the moral and the immoral - against the amoral,

against indifference. The only meaning of life is for us to develop our spiritual being. For this the

universe needs men. For anything else animals would do. The universe, you might say, is a great

metabolism of which we are the material. The universe takes us in by making us be born, then it

is

up to us to enrich the. universe, as the good enriches the body. Our death is what you might call

the

fecal process of the universe. We are thrown out - our body decays - death is a filthy, stinking

business, but our spirit by which we have enriched the universe, remains; the universe is so much

stronger through our spirit. If we do not develop our spirit through sensitivity to good and evil

we

have contributed nothing to the universe, we pass through it like a bone passes through our

system.

Repentance is the result of a long journey into ourself - and toward God. There is a meaning in

the

Catholic rite of ultimate unction. It is symbolic for the internal, infinite Self finding itself - its

Self-

recovery, its being born again, its redemption. Its meaning for the universe; its Salvation.

Now let us read the Parable of the Vineyard (Matt. 20:1-16).

For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early

in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the labourers

for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and

saw others standing idle in the market place. And said unto them: Go ye also into the

vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way. Again he went

out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went

out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all day idle?

They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the

vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive. So when even was come, the lord of

the vineyard saith unto his. steward, Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning

from the last unto the first. And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they

received every man a penny. But when the first came, they supposed that they should have

received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received

it, they murmured against the good man of the house, saying, These last have wrought but

one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of

the day. But he answered one of them and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong; didst thou not

agree with me for a penny? Take that Thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even

as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil,

because I arri good? So the last shall be the first, and the first last; for many be called, but few

chosen.

Another Parable where the infinite meaning of the finite words is so obvious is that of the

Talents.

Again a very peculiar story. The lord goes away and gives an amount of talents to each of his

servants - five to the first, two to the- second, one to the third, according to their ability. “Make

the

best of it.” So the first invests everywhere. Buys gasoline stations, supermarkets, and God knows

what. He really becomes a rich man. When the master comes back he has 10 talents, which then

was

a lot of money - a talent waii 3, 000 shekels, a shekel was 4 denari, or 4 days wages, so a talent

was

12, 000 days wages, or better than thirty years wages. Taking the average annual wage at $5,

000,

a talent was $150, 000, and ten talents $1,500,000. The first servant was worth a million and a

half!

The second, wasn‟t quite that smart - he bought a grocery store - made a go of it, and when the

master came back he had three talents - $450,000, not bad either. But the third was afraid. He

had

no courage - he lacked faith. He wanted to play safe. When the master came back he did not

want

to have lost the talent. So he buried it in the ground. And when the master came he rejoiced in

the

courage and faith of the first two. But when the third gave him his talent back, “Here it is, I

didn‟t

lose a cent,” the master got mad, “You unfaithful servant, to hell with you where there is outer

darkness, weeping, and gnashing of teeth.” Well, the poor guy didn‟t know what hit him. He

didn‟t

know his Master. He was scared of him for he did not understand him. He was a.hard man, he

thought, exploiting his servants, reaping where he sowed not, and gathering where he strawed

not.

Everything was easy for him, but life was hard for the servant. Thus, better not risk anything.

The third servant looks at infinity from the point of view of the finite. It all seems puzzling, hard,

just

not right, fishy. Better stick to what one knows and has. He is not saved, not lifted to the higher

level

of meaning, to the understanding of his infinite value. He buries his own self into the earth, lives

like

a mole. The talent is our potentiality of spirit. If we do not invest it and let it grow, chose

ourselves,

create ourselves and give ourselves, without hesitation and with spiritual boldness, we let the

Lord

down and we actually squander our good, let it decay and degenerate, let it putrefy in the hell of

the

earth.

Now let us read the. Parable of the Talents (Matt. 24:14-30).

For the Kingdom of heaven is as a man traveling into a far country, who called his own

servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to another

two, and to another one; to every man according to his several abilities; and straightway took

his journey. The one who had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and

made them other five talents. And likewise he who had received two, he also gained other

two. But. he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord‟s money.

After a long time the lord of those, servants cometh, and reckoneth with them. And so he that

had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst

unto me five talents; behold, I have gained beside them five talents more. His lord said unto

him, Well done, thou good and faithful. servant; thou ha.st been faithful over a few things,

I will make thee‟ruler over many things; enter thou into‟the joy of thy lord. He also that had

received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst.,unto me two talents; behold, I

have gained two other talents beside them. His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faith-

ful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things;

enter thou into the joy of thy lord. Then he which received the one talent came and said, Lord,

I knew thee, that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering

where thou hast not strawed. And I was afraid, and went and hid my talent in the earth; lo,

there thou hast what is thine. His lord answered and said unto him: Thou vficked and slothful

servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed:

thou oughtest, therefore, to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I

should have received mine own with usury. Take therefore the talent from him, and give it

unto him which hath ten talents. For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall

have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. And

cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of

teeth.

As you see, here reappears the moral of the parables. Unto every one who has shall be given. If

we

use the spiritual treasure within us we can only gain. But if we do not use it we shall lose all,

even

our earthly possessions.

You will find the same moral in every parable. Reading the parables with this moral in -mind

they

will make new sense to you. They will be like a revelation of a new dimension. They do give you

the

map to the realm of infinity. The moral in summary is:

(a) Part equals whole, or, an infinite part of an infinity is an infinity.

(b) What one person does spiritually all persons do spiritually; what one person does not

do

spiritually no person does spiritually. One spiritual event stands for, and is, all spiritual

events; and one spiritual omission is all spiritual omission.

My brother, who for many years was an armament engineer, once said to me, “As long as you

teach

ethics I can make guns.” He kind of felt redeemed by my action. This was the positive aspect of

all

our spiritual unity. Unfortunately, today the negative aspect prevails. Those who make guns,

nuclear

ones, will drag those who pray down to extinction. We must lift them to a higher level of

meaning,

or all perish.

Jesus not only spoke - in parables and similes - he also lived and acted. His whole life is a

symbol

of infinity, a metaphor of the spirit. And so are his miracles - they are practical metaphors. When

he

changes water into wine he changes the terrestrial into the spiritual - in this metaphor water does

not

stand for spirit but wine does. When he awakens the dead he awakens the spiritually dead to

spiritual

life, when he heals the sick he heals the spiritually sick - those who have what Kierkegaard calls

the

sickness unto death. Kierkegaard took this title from John 11:4, the story of Lazarus. To be

physically

dead is not the sickness unto death; to be spiritually dead is.

“Humanly speaking, deaih is the last thing of all; and, humanly speaking, there is hope

only

so long as there is life. But Christianly understood death is by no means the last thing of all,

hence it is only a little event within that which is all, an eternal life; and Christianly

understood there is in death infinitely much more hope thah merely humanly speaking there

is when there not only is life but this life .exhibits the fullest health and vigor.

“So then in the Christian understanding of it not even death is the sickness unto death, still

less everything which is called earthly and temporal suffering: want, sickness, wretchedness,

affliction, adversities, torments, mental sufferings, sorrow, grief. And even if such things are

so painful and hard to bear that we men say, or at all events the sufferer says, “This is worse

than death” - everything of the sort, which, if it is not a sickness, is comparable to a sickness,

is nevertheless, in the Christian understanding of it, not the sickness unto death.

“So it is that Christianity has taught the Christian to think dauntlessly of everything earthly

and worldly, including death. It is almost as though the Christian must be puffed up because

of this proud elevation above everything men commonly call misfortune, above that which

men commonly call the greatest evil. But then in turn Christianity has discovered an evil

which man as such does not know of; this misery is the sickness unto death.” (Kierkegaard,

The Sickness Unto Death, Introduction).

The sickness unto death is the sickness of the earthbound spirit. Jesus‟ miracles are the delivery

of

this spirit.

Jesus‟ miracles are practical metaphors, they show the transposition of the finite and the infinite,

and

how to use the logic of the infinite within the finite how to overcome evil by good. To interpret a

miracle we have to find the mechanics of the infinite within it. One of the most spirited

interpretations is Lloyd Douglas‟ interpretation of the feeding of the five thousand (At the end of

Chapter XV of The Robe):

“It was growing late in the afternoon. I had been so moved by the things I had heard and

seen

that I had not thought of being hungry. Reuben and I, knowing there would be nothing out

there to eat, had stopped at a market both in Capernaum and had bought some bread and

cured fish. In any other kind of crowd, we would have eaten our luncheon. But now that we

had begun to feel hungry, I was ashamed to eat what I had, before the faces of the men about

me; for, as I have said, Jesus had been talking about us all being of one family, and how we

ought to share what we had with one another. I should have been willing to divide with the

man next to me; but I didn‟t have much more than enough for myself. So I didn‟t eat; nor did

Reuben.

“„I dare say there were plenty of men in the crowd who faced the same dilemma,‟

answered

Marcellus.

“„Well the disciples were around Jesus telling him he had better dismiss the people, so

they

could go to the little villages and buy f ood. Justus told me afterward that Jesus only shook

his head and told them that the people would be fed. They were much bewildered and

worried. There was a small boy sitting very close and over hearing this talk. He had a little

basket, his own lunch, not very much; just enough to feed a boy. He went to Jesus with his

basket and said he was willing to share what he had.‟

“Marcellus‟ eyes lighted, and he leaned forward attentively. „Go on,‟ he demanded. „This

is

wonderful.‟

“„Yes, it really was wonderful, sir. Jesus took the basket and held it up for the people to

see.

And then he told how the boy wanted to share his food with all of the people. And he looked

up and thanked God for the little boy‟s gift. It was very, very quiet, sir. Then he began

breaking the small loaves into bits, and the fish he tore into little shreds; and he gave these

fragments to his disciples and told them to feed the people.‟

“„Did the crowd laugh?‟ asked Marcellus.

“„Well, no sir. We didn‟t laugh, though almost everyone smiled over such a big crowd

being

fed on almost nothing, as you might say. As I told you, I had been ashamed to bring out the

food I had, and now I was ashamed not to; so I unwrapped my bread and fish, and broke off

a piece, and offered it to the man next to me.‟

“„Wonderful,” shouted Marcellus. „Was he glad to get it?‟

“„He had some of his own... But there were plenty of people who did not have any food

along

with them, sir. And everyone was fed, that day. After it was over, they gathered up a dozen

basketfuls of fragments, left over!‟

“„This is really a marvelous story, Hariph!‟

“„You believe it, sir?‟ Hariph was happily surprised.

“„Indeed, I do. And I believe it was a miracle.‟ Jesus had inspired those stingy, selfish

people

to be decent to one another! It takes a truly great man to make one harmonious family out of

a crowd like that.‟”

Jesus, Douglas shows us, is not concerned with miracles in space and time; he is concerned with

miracles in the human soul.

Considering what I have said so far you will understand how poor is our religious education.

Both

church and Sunday school are usually social affairs with only a faint echo of religious relevance.

There is even a danger in them in that by attending them we may believe that we are religious,

and

instead become self-righteous. As Kierkegaard has said: “The trouble with Christianity are the

Christians.” We can become religious only by discovering our own inner depth. The Bible can

help

us in this process only if we know how to read it, and we can learn how to read it only if we

know

the difference between the social language of everyday life and the metaphorical language of the

Spirit. If we know this difference the Bible will become a living book to us - the true Biblion -

and

will enable us to link the infinity of our spirit with the infinite meaning of its sacred text.

1-14-1963